


Make It Clap

by shetlandowl



Series: Make it Clap [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Swimming, Anal Fingering, Anal Plug, Anal Sex, Angst, Blindfolds, Bottom Tony Stark, Bubble Bath, Dildos, Dirty Talk, Dog Tags, Exhibitionism, Fluff and Smut, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt/Comfort, Jealous Steve Rogers, Lingerie, M/M, Massage, Mirror Sex, Object Insertion, Oral Sex, Prostitution Roleplay, Road Trips, Romantic Fluff, Somnophilia, Speedos, Stripping, Uniform Kink, Vibrators, Wall Sex, Webcam/Video Chat Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-07-24 08:37:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 54,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16171511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shetlandowl/pseuds/shetlandowl
Summary: Follows theKinktober prompts, read at your own peril. For those expecting sexy times in every episode, please note that 'kinky' is applied loosely here.Steve is a sophomore at BU and Tony is finishing his graduate degree at MIT when they begin their relationship. This story is told as 31 snapshots from their first two years together. The story is told in sequential order, though not always in sequence (i.e., some chapters capture events only hours apart, while some chapters are from events weeks or months apart).





	1. Day 1: Masks

**Author's Note:**

> Each day [1-31] is given its own chapter, and each day that is NSFW is identified by an asterisk (*). For quick reference:
> 
> 1 | 2 | 3* | 4* | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8* | 9 | 10 | 11 (a/b*) | 12* | 13* | 14 | 15  
> 16 | 17 | 18* | 19* | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27* | 28 | 29* | 30* | 31*
> 
>   
> This story will be updated every Wednesday in October, but you can [follow this tag](http://shetlandowl.tumblr.com/tagged/kinktober2018) for daily updates on Tumblr. 

Rhodey brought his hand up to knock on Tony’s door, but it swung open with an aggressive excitement before he ever touched the wood. 

“Thank god it’s you,” Tony wheezed and hauled his friend into his dorm room, then with a quick peek in both directions down the hall, he closed the door behind them. The door locked on its own, but he tugged on the handle to be sure, then slid the bolt he had added for extra security. 

He might not keep wads of cash rolled up and hidden in his curtain rods, but that didn’t mean people couldn’t imagine Howard Stark’s son stowing treasures in his room. The bolt helped. 

“Tony, what is going on?” Rhodey wondered, and he held up his phone to add, “Your messages sounded serious, and now your, you’re, you…” 

He paused then, staring at Tony and tilted his head to the side. He took a step to the left. 

“You’re purple?”

“It’s just an adhesive, it washes off,” Tony promised, but when Rhodey narrowed his eyes, he smiled a little nervously. “I think. I made it! It will work.”

“I thought you were an engineer,” Rhodey drawled. “Since when are you a chemist?”

“Since last night,” Tony replied, as if that was a reasonable response. “We don’t have time for this Rhodey, my blossoming Rhodesian beauty, my black magic, my big honeybear pilot I love and respect so much—”

Rhodey stared back at him, unamused. “I will slap that purple shit right off your face, Tony.”

Tony pinched his lips together, then in a rush, he said, “I need you to call Danvers and get her to let me into their hotel.”

“You are Tony Stark,” Rhodey reminded him, speaking slowly in his effort to follow Tony’s argument. “And you want me to help you get into a Doubletree hotel—”

“Yes.”

“Onto a floor full of BU swimmers and divers—”

“Yes.”

“Into a room that the blond guy is sharing with another student—”

“Still yes.”

“When you’re not supposed to be there?” Rhodey finished with a palpable grain of disbelief. “Do you even know his name?”

“Fuck you. Of course I know his name, it’s, uh,” Tony coughed as his confidence wavered. “Steve. Steve Rogers.”

“Do you know who Steve, Steve Rogers’ roommate is?” Rhodey pressed. “Do you know if his roommate will report you for breaking the only rules they have while—”

“If she’ll help me, I can sneak in: they won’t know it’s me—”

“Tony!” Rhodey snapped, but then quickly shut his mouth. He closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath before trying again. “I’m not having this conversation with you when you’re thinking with your little brain, Tony,” he said with a strained calm. “Unless you’ve created some kind of invisibility cloak, or retro-reflective clothes, I don’t think Tony Stark will go unnoticed anywhere in Boston.”

“Love where your head’s at,” Tony had to point out, “but that’s only—”

“No buts, Tony: your face is on every magazine in the country at least twice a year!”

“ _Only_ if they see my face!”

The little throbbing in his temples threatened to grow into a serious headache, but despite his best intentions, Rhodey turned to see what Tony was pointing at. There, on a wig stand on his desk, was the uncomfortably realistic skin of another man’s face. It had no eyes and no lips, only holes where those would be expected. The skin tone was similar to Tony’s own face, but it bore no other resemblance to him. 

“No fucking way,” Rhodey murmured as Tony beamed with excitement. “You made a fucking mask?”

“Isn’t it great! It works, it even feels real,” Tony insisted, rushing over now to bring him the mannequin so Rhodey could see it up close. Rhodey stared at it with wonder, caught somewhere between horrified and genuinely amazed for the level of detail and realism that Tony had managed to develop in his disguise. 

“This is some Mission Impossible shit,” Rhodey whispered, reaching to touch the skin with respectful care. After all, this was one of Tony’s prototypes. “I can’t believe you made this—”

“Chemistry wasn’t that hard, just took like, thirtysomething hours, and—”

“—instead of asking Steve to come to you,” Rhodey finished in a louder tone. He could see in Tony’s expression when the point landed, how his lively excitement waned and paled in understanding. 

“Oh,” he breathed, stunned. 

“To your single room,” Rhodey continued, in case Tony hadn’t realized just how much more obvious and reasonable the reverse of his plan had been all along. “Where nobody knows who he is, or what he’s doing here.”

“You don’t have to rub it in,” Tony grumbled quietly, and Rhodey thumbed his nose before his smirk turned into a laugh. “Would, would you just call her and figure it out?”

“And you’re sure he’s a good dude?” Rhodey asked even as he scrolled through his contacts for Carol’s number. “We can trust him?”

Tony smiled at his question. It wasn’t the proud, beaming smile of Tony presenting his insanely realistic disguise, or the excited, scheming grin of Tony plotting to sneak himself past enemy lines. This was the bashful smile of a boy who was still new to having friends who actively looked out for him. 

“Yeah,” he replied with a quiet confidence. “Yeah, we can trust him.”

*** 

Carol was a marvel. A living, breathing marvel. Steve was delivered to Tony’s dorm within the hour, fed and showered and ready to tumble into bed. 

“Tony,” Steve said as soon as Tony shut the door behind them. He hadn’t even let go of his duffle yet, and his tone was inexplicably cautious and uncomfortable that Tony’s eyes grew wide with concern. Were Dum-E’s guts all over the floor again? Had he forgotten to clean up and again left his room looking like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre of actual chainsaws? 

“What’s that?”

Tony followed Steve’s intent stare and found the mask. The insanely realistic mask without eyes and lips that looked more like it had been peeled off someone’s face than created in a blazing all-nighter fueled by Red Bulls and coffee.

A laugh burst out of Tony as relief washed over him. “A prototype,” he tried to explain, retrieving the mask to show Steve his newest creation up close. Whether it was his excitement or his answer that had comforted Steve, he looked genuinely interested in learning what Tony had made. 

“It looks real,” he said with a clear awe in his voice, and he glanced at Tony for approval before touching the skin with his fingers. It wasn’t warm like a person’s face would be, but it was soft and supple like real skin. “This is incredible.”

“I thought it would let me sneak in to see you, but I’ll develop it for skin grafts. With a little work, it could be, uh. Useful,” Tony finished his confession lamely, clearing his throat to sound less obviously embarrassed by the plan. He did his best to keep his eyes on the mask and away from Steve’s sharp eyes, because the last thing he needed was for Steve to laugh at him. They hadn’t known each other that long, and this was only their second night together. Being laughed at was not on the night’s agenda. 

But when he dared to glance up at Steve, Steve was smiling at him in amazement. 

“So, this isn’t just a prototype,” Steve surmised. “You can actually wear this?”

“Had to use someone’s proportions,” Tony confirmed with a little shrug, but when he caught the flash of excitement in Steve’s eyes, he quickly understood. 

Tony pitched his voice low and leaned in with a suggestive smirk. “Would you like me to put it on for you?” 

“Not tonight,” Steve growled playfully, replacing the wig stand on Tony’s desk so he could pull Tony into his arms. “It’s been weeks, Tony. Yours is the only face I want to see tonight.”


	2. Day 2: Watersports + Ass worship

“ _The_ Tony Stark,” Carol observed when Tony finally wiggled his way down to the mostly empty seat beside her. She watched him look at her and look at her bag sitting on the empty seat, as if she had no idea what he meant. 

“That’s my seat,” he told her with a careful air of defiance. She smirked back, but she removed her bag so he could take the seat. His face warmed with a victorious grin and he wasted no time getting comfortable. 

“Thank you.”

“James didn’t think you’d know how to find this place,” she told him while they watched the two teams getting ready below. 

Tony gave her a sidelong look and smirked. “He was right,” he told her all too casually. “Steve showed me how to get here. This morning. Do you know what else he showed me?”

“I don’t care.”

“He can hold his breath for three and a half minutes,” Tony told her anyway. Carol stared into the middle distance and tried to ignore him as he continued elaborating. “We timed it. For science. I only took two minutes and twenty-four se—”

Carol turned and gave Tony the seething look that promised him he’d be thrown over the balcony into the pool in a heartbeat if he didn’t stop. Tony was intelligent enough to take the hint. He shut his mouth, cleared his throat, and smiled down into his cup of coffee. 

“Thank you,” he said after a momentary silence. Carol sighed and braced herself for another sprinting narrative of sexual exploits or arrogance, when Tony instead said, “For yesterday. It’s really cool, you know. That you helped. I’m one of three things around here, it’s… not to Steve, though. Rhodey said you’d be good for it, helping someone you didn’t know.”

“I know you,” Carol corrected him, albeit in a more gentle tone of voice. “You were the idiot applauding and wolf whistling every time James answered a question in debate.”

Tony scoffed and looked away from Steve long enough to give her an unimpressed look. “Cause he fucking owned you guys?”

“Cause nobody applauds or wolf whistles at debate,” she drawled with a smile curling her lips. “Genius.” 

Tony may have mumbled something like, ‘looks can be deceiving’ in reply, but Carol couldn’t tell because down below, the track suits started to come off. The soft string of curses that spilled out of him next were unintelligible but universally understood, and Carol pursed her lips to keep from grinning. 

Poolside, the swimmers were down to their suits and little else. There were guys on the team who were taller than Steve, and those who were leaner and more defined—there were even some whose competitive excitement and rush of adrenaline for the upcoming race packed more of a punch in their straining little suits, though Tony didn’t seem to notice. 

“Hey,” Tony said, apropos of nothing and visibly distracted. Carol glanced at him to see if any coherent words would follow. 

“You gonna ask Rhodey out or what?”

“...who told you I—”

“He doesn’t just like you, he trusts you,” Tony told her as if she hadn’t said anything. “It’s kinda weird to ask out someone you out rank, so… you gotta step up. You’ve got more balls than any guy I know,” he added, looking away from Steve long enough to give her a sly grin. “What’s stopping you?”

Carol let out a heavy breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. She glared at Tony and was just about to give him a piece of her mind when he preemptively brushed it off. 

“Idiot?” he guessed. “I know.”

She pursed her lips, then with a huff she hung her head and groaned. “Whatever,” she muttered. “Genius.”

*** 

Steve was tall for a diver, but he was limber and he was graceful. Even from the balcony seats the diving platform looked much, much too high for any reasonable person to jump off of, and Steve did it _backwards_. 

Tony could have written odes to the power and grace Steve exuded with every flip and twist. How a man that large made such a minimal splash baffled Tony, in part because he refused to look. He knew all too well how fast a body with Steve’s mass leaping from that height moved, and it physically hurt to watch in that crucial, final moment.

He should have been upset when MIT lost, but it was so difficult to care when Steve had done so well. 

“Won’t there be some big party tonight?” Tony asked even though Steve had crawled into Tony’s unmade bed several minutes ago and stretched out like he belonged there. Steve turned his head and cracked an eye open to respond with droll disbelief with a finely articulated arch of his brow. 

“‘s Bost’n,” he mumbled as he twisted onto his side with a sigh and a sleepy yawn. He looked tired, but determined not to give in to the seductive promises of sleep. 

“‘s okay, Tony,” Steve continued with even less clarity. “Bost’n, there’s always a party somewhere.”

Tony rolled his eyes, but he finally gave in. “I think somebody needs a nap,” he cooed in a playful sing-song, kneeling up on the bed and straddling Steve’s hips to lean over him and tug on his zip-up. “Wanna take this off, gorgeous? You’ll sleep better.”

“No. _You_ take it off,” Steve countered with a petulant pout, but as Tony leaned in closer and hummed in question, that petulant frown quivered and so clearly threatened to wither into an overtired giggling fit. 

With a big grin and a roll of his eyes, Tony muttered a quiet ‘ _fine_ ,’ and started the coveted task of unwrapping his lover. It was fairly easy business unzipping his jacket and getting one naked arm out of its sleeve, but Steve was snoozing on his side, trapping his other arm. 

“Roll over, babe,” Tony told him, sitting up and widening his stance to give Steve the space to turn onto his belly while Tony straddled his body. His complaints were short-lived and superficial, and soon, Tony had freed him of the red and white jacket. He shuffled down the length of Steve’s body, sliding the elastic waistband of his bottoms down his waist, over the firm, ample curve of his ass, down his thick, strong, long thighs until he could pull them and his shoes off. 

Steve Rogers, waxed clean from the neck down, freshly showered, and naked in all his glory in Tony’s bed. 

“Merry Christmas to _me!_ ” Tony cheered under his breath as he climbed back into bed. 

“Tonyy,” Steve complained with an insistent little wiggle of his hips. “‘s _cold_.”

Tony tugged the neglected comforter closer to cover Steve as well as he could while still straddling Steve’s thighs. Some treasures he wasn’t willing to give up that easily. 

Steve gave another wiggle. “Comfortable?” he wondered with a sleepy smile in his voice. 

“Appreciating the view,” Tony replied as he slid his hands up the back of Steve’s thighs to frame his thick and sinfully unblemished ass. Tony’s hands were big, strong and nimble enough to build anything, with long, clever fingers that could solve problems even his eyes couldn’t see. But even for him, this ass was a lot to handle. 

With a slow, steady pressure, he rolled his thumb over the full crest of Steve’s ass. Steve moaned shamelessly under him until Tony’s thumbs eased down over the slope of his lower back and found the muscles where his ass connected to his lower back. Immediately, Steve winced and tensed up under him. Tony lessened the pressure at once, but it wasn’t in his nature to abandon a problem once he had discovered it. He continued working over the tense muscles, soothing the pain away with slow, gentle circles until Steve’s soft gusts of wincing pain turned into quiet moaning, and the stress of his body melted away under Tony’s hands. 

Steve fell asleep soon after the initial pain was gone, but that only made it easier for Tony to identify the sore muscles and knots of tension. He worked Steve’s lower back thoroughly, pausing now and then to indulge in tracing the natural dimples of his lower back. Tony leaned forward to press a soft kiss to Steve’s shoulder once he finished with his lower back, then slid down a little further to knead out the sore, tired muscles of his round ass. 

Tony was only getting into the meat of the issue when he had to pull away. Whether Steve was particularly responsive to having his ass touched, responding to the release of tension in his body, or enjoying a wet dream, he had started rolling his hips against the mattress, hungry for more friction. But he and Tony hadn’t had that talk yet, and Tony wasn’t crossing that line without explicit consent. 

Doing his best not to move too quickly and jostle Steve awake, Tony swung his leg over and climbed off the bed, covering Steve with the comforter to keep him warm. He undressed quietly then slipped back under the covers to join Steve for an indulgent afternoon nap. 

He tried to keep his distance at first, but Steve wriggled his way closer and slung a possessive arm over Tony’s body. “Stay,” he murmured in his sleep, nuzzling into Tony’s hair, and who was Tony to deny him? There was nowhere else he’d rather be.


	3. Day 3: Sensory deprivation *

It was still dark the next morning when Tony stirred awake. Steve was stretched out in bed beside him, poking at his phone briefly before letting it drop to the floor. 

“Sorry,” Steve murmured with an unhappy grunt. He turned back into bed and shuffled a little closer, but he didn’t seem to be falling asleep again. “Forgot to turn off my alarm.” 

“Do you need to go?” Tony asked, turning on his side to face Steve. “I can get you a cab.”

“Buses run to the city all the time, Tony, don’t worry about it,” Steve promised, his fond smile warm in his voice. “I’ll head out around nine. We still have two hours.”

Tony licked his lips without taking his eyes off of Steve. “And then when?” he whispered, grinding his teeth against the pitiful tone he hadn’t meant to share. 

“My plate is full this week and this weekend,” Steve replied in a soft apology. “I have a presentation next Monday. Can I take you to dinner that night? Or, well. Uh. Any day next week.”

This time, Tony felt a little less embarrassed in his reaction. It was nice to feel like he wasn’t the only one excited for their next date. Steve slept naked, so there wasn’t much to grab on to - Tony took him by the hair and pulled him in for a happy, sloppy kiss and didn’t let go until his man was moaning putty in his hands. 

“Next Monday,” he rasped once he’d pulled Steve away from his lips. “Take me somewhere nice.”

“Sir, yessir,” Steve growled back, panting softly for catching his breath. He pressed closer eagerly to reach Tony’s lips again, but Tony’s grip of his hair held firm with the faintest distance between them. Steve mewled irritably under his breath, but since he couldn’t reach his prize with his lips, he swept his tongue over Tony’s lips for an obscene, indulgent taste. 

Despite his dedicated and eager interest, when Tony tugged him off by his hair, Steve relented without delay. 

“I don’t,” Tony tried to explain as he panted for breath. “I don’t like so, so many kisses in the morning.”

Steve didn’t frown, or look confused. He only hummed quietly in understanding and smiled back at Tony, like he’d been given a new piece of the puzzle in front of him. “Thank you for telling me,” he whispered, then curiously asked, “Anything else you don’t like in the morning?”

Tony blinked up at him. It wasn’t a question he had expected, and he eased his grip of Steve’s hair and started to absently stroke his hair and rub his scalp as he weighed his answer. Steve sighed softly and eased himself down on Tony, resting his head on Tony’s shoulder happily while he waited for Tony’s answer. 

“I don’t eat before coffee,” Tony eventually said. “Nothing cold to drink, either.”

Steve pressed a soft kiss over his chest, then pushed himself up on an elbow to meet Tony’s eyes again. “What if I want to suck your dick, Tony? Eat your ass out?” he asked, speaking slowly and clearly and without breaking eye contact. “What if I want to fuck you? Give you a reason to remember our date on Monday.”

“I, uh,” Tony stammered, blinking up at Steve in his shock. His Steve, his kind, gentle Steve? “Um, yeah? Yes, please?”

Steve smiled back at him, but he said nothing. He bowed his head, and with his eyes closed he pressed a soft kiss over Tony’s sternum, taking that moment to let his lips linger over his heart. 

Then, with a playful, smirking grin at Tony, Steve moved down the length of Tony’s body until Tony’s thighs rested against his shoulders and Steve could nuzzle the base of his cock. Steve was barely doing more than mouthing at the base of his cock and laving the hardening length of it with his tongue, but in his surprise, Tony arched off the bed and groaned deeply in his pleasure. 

If he hadn’t expected Steve’s confidence when he first asked to fuck him, Tony certainly hadn’t expected Steve’s eager playfulness now. He leisurely indulged in licking and sucking his way up and down the length of Tony’s cock until Tony nearly wept from it. When Tony’s fingers curled ever tighter in Steve’s hair, Steve finally wetted his lips properly and took him into his mouth. He swirled his tongue around the head as he softly sucked on it while stroking the base of Tony’s cock in a tight fist, until Tony’s groans turned to breathless, broken pleas of Steve’s name and his thighs squeezed around Steve’s head, quivering with need.

“Steve—please,” he whimpered breathlessly, tugging feebly at Steve’s hair until Steve relented and released his cock. “Fucking—you’re, fuck, you’re _unreal_ , I can’t—”

With his lips obediently closed, Steve still hummed against the base of Tony’s cock. Tony groaned softly and glanced down in time to catch Steve winking slyly back at him before ducking his head. 

Steve’s hands closed like two vices around Tony’s ass and spread him apart until it nearly stung. Bared, exposed, and trembling with excitement, Tony could only cry out as Steve licked and sucked on his furrowed hole until Tony could feel the excess drool and saliva trickling down his crack.

Instinctively, Tony threw an arm over his mouth before he cried out and woke his neighbors. He threw the other arm over his eyes for good measure, because this couldn’t be real—this was not real, he must be dreaming, he was unraveling at the seams and Steve was only getting started. 

Steve gentled his grip and eased Tony back onto the mattress to lean over him, braced on his hands and knees to press a soft kiss to Tony’s forearm. “Babe?” he whispered softly in his concern. “Is it, um. You okay?”

Tony surged up after him and threw his arms around Steve, chasing his kisses with a hungry, biting greed—in one heartbeat, he seated himself in Steve’s lap, and in the next, Steve pushed back, pressing Tony down into the mattress on his side and crowding around him possessively, biting into the crook of Tony’s neck and thrusting his cock against Tony’s ass eagerly, grunting with the need to be inside him already. 

“Can’t bear to watch, Tony?” he growled between sucking wet, biting kisses to the soft skin behind Tony’s ear. “Will that set you off, watching me? My lips stretched over your thick, gorgeous cock?” 

Tony didn’t have two brain cells to rub together for a coherent response. His brain was melting and dribbling out of his ears, but it was okay, the way Steve held him, used him, cherished him was worth it, and it was only in the scant seconds when Steve pulled away that Tony roared his disapproval.

Steve pressed him further into the mattress in return, then slid in behind Tony’s body until there was no space between them. With one hand, Steve hauled Tony’s top leg up and in a deep, rumbling voice Tony had never heard before, ordered Tony to spread himself for him. Tony reacted on instinct, hooking an arm around his top leg to do as Steve asked. 

“Close your eyes, Tony,” Steve murmured then, his voice so soft and soothing against Tony’s ear that he nearly melted with it. Seconds later, Steve readjusted behind him so he could lay his hand over Tony’s eyes, a gentle, reassuring pressure that reminded Tony how nothing else mattered in this moment between them. It was so easy for Tony to close his eyes and lose himself in Steve. He forgot how to breathe as instead he mimicked the rise and fall of Steve’s chest; he forgot where he was since all that mattered was the way Steve’s panted his name like a prayer and whispered moans of praise into his hair. 

Warm, lube coated fingers stroked over his spit-slick hole before slowly pressing in, first only with one gentle finger, but as he pressed enough lube into Tony’s body, Steve eased a second finger into him. In every other way they lay motionless, back to front and breathing together. Deprived of his sight, Tony’s world narrowed down to the two long, thick fingers thrusting in and out of him, patiently scissoring and stretching him open. Like this was all that mattered. Steve was devoted to his task, unhurried and thorough, despite how Tony whimpered or begged for him to get on with it, to hurry up. 

After all, he knew what would come next. He could feel it, the hot, heavy weight of Steve’s hard cock trapped between them, nestled against Tony’s ass.

“Please, Steve,” he begged with a quiet sob, “please, please fuck me, I can’t—I need it, fuck me, Steve, please.”

Whether it finally was his cut off sob that did it, or if Steve was getting to the end of his rope as well, finally, it worked. With a soft reminder to keep his eyes closed, Steve withdrew his fingers from Tony’s ass, took a moment to roll on a condom and slick himself up before finally lining up and breaching Tony’s body. 

His position was difficult to maintain and he ached in the added stretch, but Tony was determined to do it for Steve. Steve, who peppered adoring kisses to his shoulder and throat as he eased into Tony’s body inch for endless inch, until finally Tony was afraid he wouldn’t have room to breathe. 

“You… you’re perfect, Tony, you feel amazing,” he moaned breathlessly into the soft skin of Tony’s throat as he was finally fully seated in the tight, slick clutch of Tony’s body. He paused there for a moment, rolling his hips experimentally before stilling and holding his position with care. 

A few fleeting seconds were lost to him until he heard Steve calling his name. It was only then Tony realized he’d been holding his breath. He hadn’t said a word or made a sound.

“Gonna hang around there all day, or are you going to fuck me, soldier?” he rasped with feigned nonchalance. Steve, who’d grown tense with concern, laughed breathlessly into the back of his neck. He pressed a soft kiss to Tony’s shoulder, whispering dear apologies for ‘losing focus.’

“It won’t happen again,” Steve promised with a quiet growl, rolling his hips as he slowly built up to a controlled, shallow rhythm. He stretched out over Tony’s body, pinning him down and boxing him in between his thick, muscular arms. Tony still clutched his right thigh with his left hand, and as Steve flattened him into the mattress, Tony became powerless to move. He grasped the edge of the mattress with his free hand, but Steve took it in his, lacing their fingers together and holding on as he pounded into Tony with a desperate pace he could barely control. 

With Tony’s arms securely restrained, Steve pushed his free hand into the space between the mattress and Tony’s turned thighs, not that Tony knew what was happening until Steve’s fist closed around his cock. There was no pause, no gentle warning before Steve started jerking him off with a grip so tight it bordered on painful. Tony cried himself hoarse, cried out Steve’s name, and as Steve twisted his hand aggressively over the head of Tony’s cock, he sobbed in shock and in pleasure, his whole body convulsing uncontrollably under Steve’s heavy weight. Steve let go of Tony’s spent cock and instead grasped Tony’s forearm. With one hand holding Tony’s hand and the other grabbing the same arm, Steve had Tony well and truly trapped under him again, and he held Tony firmly in place as he pounded into his body, chasing his own release. Under him Tony purred and moaned his encouragement, still breathless and euphoric from his orgasm, and when Steve’s rhythm finally faltered and stuttered and groaned deeply with satisfaction into Tony’s neck, Tony pressed back eagerly to encourage Steve to stay, to not pull out yet and let Tony enjoy the satisfaction of being filled and used and so thoroughly satiated.

“That’s what you want?” Steve mumbled with a loopy, delirious wonder, but he obliged Tony and eased his weight down on top of him and pressed his hips flush against Tony’s ass. “Don’t worry, babe. ‘m not going anywhere.”


	4. Day 4: Mirror sex *

It hadn’t been a month since that otherwise insignificant night when Tony had ventured downtown and met Steve. He was catching up with Rhodey after an Air Force ROTC event celebrating the start of the school year, but somewhere between the event and Tony’s arrival, Rhodey had run into Carol and some of her friends. Carol was in the Air Force ROTC at BU, and even though she was currently dealing with a shoulder injury, she was part of the BU swimming and diving team, too. 

Rhodey was a ride or die friend, and Tony couldn’t begrudge him this one time he forgot the bro code. Mostly because Steve was there, and while the rest of Carol’s friends played pool, Steve and Tony sat back and talked for hours. Even after the numerous rematches, when most of the ROTC crew had waved goodbye and left, Steve and Tony effortlessly found more to talk about, more to laugh about, until the bar keep closing up had to kick them out. The T had stopped running hours ago, and Tony had insisted on driving Steve to campus. Steve had allowed it, only if the drive came with a good night kiss. 

Tony had driven him to his dorm, and on the doorstep to the building, Steve kissed him for the first time. A warm, chaste peck on the lips, and a smile to light up the darkest night sky. 

Now that stupid smile and that stupid face were on a weekend lock-down trying to get a group presentation put together for some dumb communications class. Tony had holed up in his workshop Friday through Saturday until he hit a wall, and even after an hour at the gym, he still felt bored and restless. 

Tony peeled the boxing wraps off his hands impatiently at future!Tony’s expense and tossed them over a chair to dry. He kicked off his sneakers on his way to his bathroom, leaving his keys, sneakers, and sweater strewn haphazardly across the floor as he went. 

It wasn’t until he was pulling his undershirt off and caught his reflection in the mirror that the idea came to him. 

If he was going to spend this damn weekend missing Steve, then he could make damn sure Steve knew what he was missing in return. 

He plucked at his soaked training top in consideration. It was sleeveless, always a plus, but it was old and worn. The gun metal grey had faded over time as it became less tight and more transparent - and while the latter was a plus, the former was not flattering. While it was wet from his sweat, it clung to his skin and showed off the his pecs and his abs, but it would be a race against the clock to get the right picture before the wicking fabric dried. 

Tony snatched up his phone and turned his back to the mirror, giving himself enough distance to catch the top of his thighs in the photo so that Steve wouldn’t miss the full view of his ass in his navy blue tights. He snapped the first few as he tried to assess the right over-the shoulder angle. On impulse, he gathered a fistfull of his top and pushed it down over his crotch until the fabric clung to his back like a second skin. Pulling it down drew the attention down to his hips, and he spread his stance incrementally with a small arch in his back to really make Steve’s mouth water. With a sly smirk over his shoulder, he took the last picture through the mirror and sent it to Steve with a simple caption that read, _Missed you at the gym_. 

He left plenty of space between his caption and the picture so the picture wouldn’t pop up on Steve’s lock screen. But if he didn’t know there was a picture attached, Steve might be less inclined to respond quickly, and that was irritating. Tony glared at his phone for all the ten seconds he managed to be patient before trying something different. 

He released the bunched up fabric of his top and, while watching himself in the mirror through his camera phone, he palmed and squeezed his cock through his leggings. It wasn’t important to get himself off, but _damn_ it felt good, and he knew Steve was intimately familiar with that particular expression on Tony’s face. He stroked slowly, drawing it out, occasionally grinding the heel of his palm against the tip until he hissed from the grazing hint of pain and sudden spark of pleasure. He did it again, filming himself as he rubbed his palm in small circles over the head of his cock and he threw his head back, even biting his lip in a shameless show of indulgent desire. 

Steve still hadn’t replied to his earlier message, so once he’d scrolled through the paused video and taken a screencap in a position that he liked, he decided to keep the photo for later. It was Steve’s turn to stew. Tony was passing up a quick shower to take a bath instead, and if that meant that Steve’s replies would go unanswered for the next hour or so, then so be it. 

*** 

Tony lasted all of five minutes without his phone. 

Steve still hadn’t replied. 

Tony took pictures of his legs in different positions, until one with his thighs slightly splayed and bent stood out as a winner. He sent it to Steve with the caption, _You should be here_ , without clarifying whether he meant in the tub or in the vacant real estate between his legs. 

Fuck communications, the most pointless of all cations. Vacation, supplication, lubrication, fornication. Replication. Lactation wasn’t one of them, but Tony enjoyed the way it sounded, and he gave it an honorable mention. In a weak moment of spite, Tony thought he wouldn’t be surprised to hear Steve was struggling in the damn class. Nobody with a decent understanding of _contemporary communication_ would let twenty five minutes lapse without making a single peep. Not when Tony looked that fucking good. 

It took Tony all of a minute to feel absolutely rotten about his bitter thoughts. Steve worked hard, damnit, with his diving scholarship and his ROTC. How the man had a life outside of full class load, sports, and the reserve army Tony didn’t know, but he was grateful Steve was making the effort to carve out time for him. 

But why couldn’t Steve carve out two stupid seconds right now to text back? 

*** 

What had started as a plan to make a short video for Steve had turned into one of the hottest goddamn _self-care sessions_ Tony had ever experienced. He hadn’t even gone for his precious monster dildo that he kept for the most special occasions, since this was meant to be for Steve. He didn’t need Steve to know Tony had one (or more) dildos longer and fatter than Steve’s cock. So he went with a tried-and-true average dildo that was passably realistic, which hopefully would make it easier for Steve’s future fantasies. 

He moved into his bedroom where he could turn out the mirror from his wardrobe for a nice angle. Tony planted the dildo to the hardwood floor, and even when he tugged or slapped the damn thing, the suction cup at the base swayed and bounced, but remained firmly anchored for Tony's use. He hauled a chair over and set up the camera phone so he could captured the reflection of himself through the mirror without including the chair or the phone itself. It took some maneuvering, but he wasn’t in the engineering program for nothing. 

Tony started slow, fingering himself open while absently stroking his cock, just enough to really enjoy himself as he worked two, then three fingers into his ass. Deliberately, he scissored his fingers at the rim of his hole, stretching himself open until he had to reach back with both hands to really get a display how eager, how ready his ass was for the taking. He turned his head to watch, catching his own eye in his reflection before concentrating on lining up with the slick, waiting dildo. 

In one smooth push, Tony impaled himself on the curved dildo. What the toy lacked in length or girth, it made up for with a perfect curve that grazed his prostate with every thrust. Whether Tony rode it straight, bouncing up and down on the full length of the dildo, or spread his thighs wide to roll his hips to take it at an angle, it seemed to bend with a single-minded goal to knuckle over his prostate. 

What was meant to be a quick teasing video nearly brought Tony to tears. At first the plan was about giving Steve a good show and nothing else. Tony tried to keep his head clear by taking intermittent breaks from that aggressively well designed toy. He’d pull all the way off the shaft, reaching back to bare his well fucked hole for Steve through the mirror, but soon those brief respites were not enough. He alternated between jerking off with a surging need or grinding his palm against his cock to stave off the inevitable. 

It wasn’t until he looked over his shoulder to catch his reflection in the mirror in his next break to show off his fucked out ass to the camera that Tony lost it. He reached back and lined the dildo up again and thrust back onto it like this toy would bear his salvation. He braced himself on his forearms and rolled back on the dildo with reckless abandon, his heavy cock bobbing wildly between his thighs with every thrust until finally, clawing at the floorboards, he threw his head back and came with a strangled, breathless groan. Come splattered over the floor and his abdomen, but as Tony crawled off the dildo on wobbly arms, he couldn’t care less. He planted right on top of the mess, panting and rolling onto his side as he luxuriated in his high and tried to catch his breath. 

*** 

Tony cleaned himself and his floor up, but even then Steve hadn’t replied to any of his messages. He didn’t have his Read receipts turned on, so Tony couldn’t even see if Steve had seen them in the first place, but it didn’t matter. An hour without checking his phone once? 

With nothing better to do at ten o’clock at night, Tony decided to get this sent out and hit the hay. He edited a copy of the video down to seconds before his orgasm took him. He saved the full length video for himself, but Steve could suffer the cliffhanger if he wasn’t going to play along. 

He sent Steve the edited video, preceding it with the caption, _Thinking of you._

*** 

Tony tossed and turned all night, and finally gave up on sleep around six the next morning. He rolled over and grabbed his phone off his night stand before so much as thinking about facing the world. Among a variety of email notifications and news updates were two sole messages that had come in from Steve around four in the morning. 

The first one was a screenshot of a return bus ticket from the BU campus bus station to the one nearest Tony’s dorm in Cambridge. Steve would arrive at 7:30am and be there well into the night with a return trip scheduled at 5am the next morning. 

He had only written two words after that, but they were enough to send a shivering thrill down Tony’s spine. 

_Be ready._


	5. Day 5: Shotgunning

Stark money made a lot of things possible, including last minute romantic get-aways for a long weekend. They both had a Monday off early in October for Columbus Day, or as Tony liked to call it, Bartolomé Day. 

He wanted to whisk Steve away from the city, but he had no interest in Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, or any of the oceanside resorts Massachusetters (Massachusettians? Massachusettoans? Massacheuers?) seemed to favor. Tony wanted privacy, apart from everyone and out of sight. Besides, it was _fall_. He wanted crunchy, colorful leaves, not white sand beaches. 

Bless his trusting heart, Steve hadn’t even pressed for a location after Tony told him it was a surprise. Tony had told him it was private, a weekend off the grid for hiking in the wild outdoors away from the rest of civilization. No electricity, no wifi. Despite all odds and rational explanations, Steve promised he’d only be happier that way. Tony chose to believe him.

They stopped off at Joe’s Diner on the I-90. They’d seen the advertisement early on, and Steve’s stomach had rumbled like he hadn’t eaten a BLT an hour earlier. They pulled in and treated themselves to the delicious indulgences of all American diners. By the time they left, Tony was halfway to a food coma and Steve had an arm around him for support, bracing most of his weight as they walked to the car. 

“Shotgun,” Tony mumbled, dangling the car keys at Steve. Steve came to an immediate halt. 

“Babe… you know I don’t drive.”

“What better time to learn?” Tony countered happily, gesturing at the wide open road. The I-90 ran one lane north and one lane south, and the highway was practically abandoned. “No passing, no merging, no clutch. Just point and click. Besides, it’s a rental: we’re insured to the gills.”

Steve eyed the keys, then eyed the car. The black Range Rover SUV looked damn near indestructible. 

“Fifteen year olds in the south drive legally: I have faith in you,” Tony assured him, then without waiting for an answer, tossed Steve the keys. “Shotgun!”

Tony packed himself into the passenger seat and reached in the backseat for their first of many bag of chips. This one was Cool Ranch, and Tony popped it open and was munching happily by the time Steve made his way to the car. He stood in the open door of the driver’s seat staring at Tony for a long time, but something must have told him Tony had no intention of giving up his Doritos to drive another two hours, and he eventually slid in behind the wheel. 

There were buttons for everything - for pushing his seat back, lowering the seat, and Tony talked him through adjusting the side and rear view mirrors. Even the ignition was a push start. 

“There’s nobody coming, so keep your foot on the break and change the gear to drive,” Tony said slowly as Steve followed every instruction very carefully. “Then ease your foot off the break slowly… and pull out.”

Steve didn’t take his eyes off their surroundings, but he still huffed a nervous laugh at Tony’s words. “Never thought I’d hear you say those words.”

Tony snickered into his bag of chips, but otherwise was quiet as Steve slowly learned how to maneuver the car by navigating them out of the parking lot. It was a little shaky at first, and they jolted forward when he took the stop sign out of the parking lot too abruptly, but it didn’t matter. Nobody was around to get irritated or pressure Steve into moving any faster. Tony didn’t even bother telling him about the blinkers at first, instead just talking him through how to get back to the highway, when to speed and what to look for, and brave, trusting Steve dared to push it to 65 mph on the one-lane highway in his first twenty minutes behind the wheel. 

Tony gave him a few minutes to adjust and relax before holding up a chip. “Dorito?” he asked, and Steve opened his mouth without question. Instead, Tony stuffed the chip into his own mouth to delight in Steve’s look of disgruntled surprise, then fed him two chips immediately after. 

“You’re doing great,” Tony told him with a smile, “How would you feel about a blowjob?”

For a second, Steve blinked owlishly at Tony. “What, _now?_ ” he cried, then caught himself and immediately turned his eyes back on the road. There’d even been a little crack in his voice, and Tony giggled shamelessly at Steve’s scandalized shock. 

“‘s okay,” he snickered quietly, “Next time.” 

“No! No blowjobs while driving,” Steve said in his strictest tone of voice, the one that sent rippling sparks of electricity down Tony’s spine and fanned the fire Steve ironically had no intention of addressing in this moment. “No blowjobs, no handjobs, no sex of any kind. Are we clear?”

Tony bit at his lip in an effort to quiet himself, but it was no use. He groaned softly under his breath, sinking further into his seat while palming his cock through his jeans. 

He didn’t have to say a word before Steve cleared his throat and said, “Right, we’re pulling over.”

*** 

Well fed and well fucked, Steve and Tony made it to their cozy, rustic treehouse. It was tucked away among the trees under a thick canopy of red and orange leaves, with large, sliding glass doors, and no other people or structures as far as the eye could see. Steve took both of their small duffles and carried them up the stairs. 

Tony followed him hesitantly, watching as Steve set their bags on the small table. He grinned at the little fire going in the honest to god wood-burning stove that warmed their tree house, then stepped out to take in the view from the balcony. The more he saw, the more Tony watched his smile grow, until with a surge of energy Steve climbed the ladder to the loft to see the bed. 

“Tony, get up here,” he called down before turning to hold his hand out, urging Tony to follow him. “This is incredible!” 

A part of him wanted to hesitate. Soon, an hour would pass, and Steve would wonder how the Mets were doing, or if he’d received an email about a class. One way or another, this was too good to be true. 

Steve took a small step closer and looked down at him with a smile. “Will I need to carry you up the ladder, my prince?”

“I’m coming, keep your pants on,” Tony drawled and climbed the stairs. Even if it wouldn’t last, he could enjoy this for what it was, right? 

“That’s the last thing I want to do,” Steve told him matter of factly, and in the two seconds it took Tony to climb into the loft, Steve had - true to his word - dropped his pants and climbed under the covers. 

Light flooded the intimate little nook from every direction. The A-frame ceiling was built entirely of reclaimed glass, and the large French doors to the balcony allowed sunlight in from the front of the cabin while a large arched window dominated the back wall. There was no other furniture in the loft except for the bed that had been dressed in layered, warm bedding, and cotton flannel sheets. 

“No clothes in bed, _at all_ ,” Steve decided as he pulled his sweaters over his head. He had already crawled under the three or four layers of fleece blankets and comforters, and as with any point well made, he wiggled out of his briefs and dropped them over the side of the bed where the rest of his clothes already lay in a haphazard pile. With a cheeky grin and an eager pat on the mattress where he obviously wanted Tony to join him, Steve batted his eyelashes and pulled the covers aside to flash the side of his naked thigh. “Tony? I’m waiting…”

What man was he to turn down that kind of an invitation? Tony pulled his clothes off without any grace or modesty and crawled into bed to plaster himself against Steve’s gorgeous, inviting, and very _warm_ body. Steve only laughed at Tony’s sudden burst of action and quickly covered him up with the blankets to keep them warm, drawing him into the protective embrace of his strong arms and proceeded to chase away every fear and worry plaguing Tony’s thoughts with his tongue, his lips, and his sharp, wicked teeth.


	6. Day 6: Cock worship

_Kukkuta Sastra is a form of divination based on cockfighting that originated in India. It is particularly prevalent in districts of Krishna, Guntur, and Godavari during the Sankranti festival. Although Kukkuta Sastra originated in India it has since spread as far as Indonesia, and has become incorporated into Javanese-Balinese religious practices. The practice and interpretation of cock handling, cock behavior, and cock positioning depend on a plethora of variables. For example, the participant must face the cock according to the day of the week: on Fridays and Sundays, they face north; on Mondays and Saturdays, they face south; on Wednesdays and Thursdays, they face west; and on Tuesdays, they face east. A feeble cock …_

Steve had never seen so many cocks in the same place at the same time. Not even in gay porn did you get such a high density of cocks per square inch than in Chapter 6 of his _Religions of Southeast Asia_ textbook. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or burn the textbook. He just wanted it to end.

_The Kukkuta Sastra dictated the influence of various Zodiac signs in the religious practice of these regions. Cock shapes, sizes, and colorings were fundamental to the preferred treatment of the cock’s perceived potential. Winning cock strategies were highly sought after, and cock handlers or owners were encouraged to follow the rules best suited to his cock before placing any bets in order to increase his chance of victory._

If he stared at the page long enough, the words stopped having meaning and just turned into cock soup. Here a cock, there a cock, everywhere you look there was cock. Having a crisis over cocks was not appropriate for a Tuesday mid-afternoon at the library, not by any stretch of the imagination. All around him students were working on perfectly reasonable activities, like typing up term papers, or making notecards. 

But sure enough, here he was, all cocked out. 

Steve squeezed his eyes shut and tried to calm himself. He medaled in the NCAA, he could fucking do this. All he needed to do was focus. Words were arbitrary, completely and absolutely pointless except for the socially constructed meaning applied to them. It just so happened that some people used this word to mean a violent, territorial fighting machine, while Steve used it to have a good time. 

With a sigh of defeat, he slumped down in his chair and reached into the pocket of his sweatpants for some relief. This was a library, people were studying all around him, and he should be, too - he had no interest in religious studies, and that made it so much more difficult to absorb the details. Broad strokes wouldn’t cut it, the professor had told them that she considered every word in the textbook fair game. It didn’t matter that providence by cock would never be relevant to his life again, he still had to know it inside and out. 

The phone buzzed in his hand and undid the vestigial resistance of his guilty conscience. He pulled it out immediately and just seeing a text from Tony cleared the drowsy fog of disinterest in his head and lifted the weight of boredom from his shoulders. 

_> Received from Sweetheart at 13:41: Emergency lab shutdown bc some idiot spilled methane in the hallway everything smells like farts fml_

_> You sent at 13:41: I’m losing my mind studying cocks._  
_> You sent at 13:41: ALL THE COCKS.  
_ _> You sent at 13:42: Even the small freckled ones. _

The phone jumped to life in his hand as it buzzed with an incoming phone call. Steve declined the call, but he shot to his feet and started throwing his books, pens and highlighters into his rucksack like the building was on fire. With a mildly apologetic nod to the strangers staring at his sudden burst of energy, he fled the building and called Tony back.

“Sorry, library,” were the first words out of his mouth, while Tony was busy making demands on his end of the line. 

“TELL ME EVERYTHING.”

“It’s my Religion of Southeast Asia class,” Steve explained as he wandered away from the library with no destination in mind. “This chapter is about the role of astrology as sign of providence and tool for divination.”

“But how do the cocks come in?” Tony asked with a perfectly sincere delivery that Steve almost bought. 

Almost, until he heard the giggling. 

“This isn’t funny!” Steve complained, but Tony’s attempt to silence himself only made him snort loudly. Steve shouldn’t have found it endearing. 

“On what planet is that not funny!” he wheezed with laughter. 

“On the planet where I have to remember every detail about every fucking cock under the sun!” Steve answered emphatically, turning heads all around him. “The cock’s technique, the direction the cock moves in, the initial position of the cock—Fridays they must face north, unless they have black feathers, then they only face north on Sundays, unless the owner’s name begins with a J, then it can only face North on Monday afternoons between the hours of one and four, but at least they all agree that on Wednesdays they wear pink.”

Tony was dying, crying and giggling breathlessly. “Oh my, my fucking—Mean Girls?! I just can’t, I fucking love you, this is, uh. It’s, uh.” 

Anonymous students passed Steve in a blur where he had suddenly become rooted to the asphalt. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t even breathe. All Steve could do in those precious seconds was to listen to Tony’s stumbling silence as he fumbled for a natural way to save himself. 

Two months. Was it too soon? Did love have to follow a timeline? What was the difference between love confessed after 6 weeks and the love confessed after months— _years_ —of careful consideration? Why wasn’t _that_ in the fucking textbook? At least that would have been helpful and relevant to Steve’s life. 

“I, I uh,” Tony floundered in a way Steve had never imagined possible. “You weren’t, um. You weren’t supposed to hear that yet.”

It wasn’t a retraction. It wasn't an apology. It wasn’t a punchline. 

“Please don't say anything—” Tony hurried to assure him when Steve loudly spoke over him. 

“To be honest, I don’t know what love is,” he confided in Tony. The silence on Tony’s end was deafening, and he wasn’t even sure Tony hadn’t hung up on him in his embarrassment, except that was so unlike Tony that Steve braved the rest of his confession. “I thought I did, but nothing I knew holds a candle to how I feel for you. I care about you, Tony, a lot,” he finished more quietly, suddenly aware of the fact that he was standing in the middle of rush hour foot traffic. Steve shuffled to the side and cleared his throat before to speak before he lost his nerve. “I miss you all the time. I think about you all the time. And if that’s how you feel, I, I want to earn your love.”

Steve thought he might have heard Tony whine over the phone, but he couldn’t be sure. 

“You… you are too much,” Tony whispered, his voice trembling with a touch of delirium. 

“Don’t think you’ve ever said that to me with my clothes on,” Steve teased him in a lowered voice, and Tony practically squeaked before the giggles took him again. 

“To be continued in person?” Tony suggested when he’d collected himself, the smile clear in his voice. “Maybe over dinner, with our clothes on?”

Steve grinned like a fool. Like that was a question he’d ever have to think twice about. “I’d like that, Tony.”

“Alright, then if that’s good for now… the lab isn’t safe until morning if you want help studying. Educate me in the potential power of cocks, Steven.” 

“It will be my genuine pleasure.”


	7. Day 7: Aphrodisiacs

_> Received from Sweetheart at 02:07: What turns you on?_

Steve paused the video explaining _Real vs. Nominal GDP_ and reached for his phone. He didn’t have time for this. He needed to finish his homework and go to sleep; tomorrow was their last full battalion practice for the weekend’s Ranger Challenge and he needed to be sharp. The CRB needed him to be sharp.

But who was he kidding?

_> You sent at 02:08: Loudmouthed brunets who don’t take no for an answer._

He turned the phone face down on his desk and resumed the video. GDP made sense when Professor Sima had explained it in class, so why the hell did it feel like interpreting Greek when Steve tried to do it himself?

Light emanate from under the edges of the overturned phone. Without thinking, Steve paused the video again and reached for it.

_> Received from Sweetheart at 02:08: Wow, that’s next level sass. Stressed out?_

_> You sent at 02:09: Sorry sweetheart it’s just econ homework_  
_> You sent at 02:09: It’s due tomorrow at noon, but Charlie’s meeting for practice 5-9_  
_> You sent at 02:10: I might as well be banging my head at the wall._

_> Received from Sweetheart at 02:10: Send it to me I’ll do it_

Steve didn’t have the energy to be outraged or horrified by the suggestion of cheating. He’d been trying to do this homework since he finished his dialogue interpretation assignment for comms, after coming home from his French discussion section. He was so worn down that even cheating sounded reasonable.

_> You sent at 02:11: I appreciate you want to help but I’d rather fail than cheat_

_> Received from Sweetheart at 02:12: Don’t be a heel Steve_  
_> Received from Sweetheart at 02:12: Let me do this and we’ll go over what it means together later_  
_> Received from Sweetheart at 02:12: After rotc and before your test_

Was Steve going crazy from lack of sleep? Tony was making sense. It didn’t matter when he learned the material, just that he learned it for the test. And that test was going to be murder, he knew he could use every additional point from attendance and homeworks that he could get to boost his final grade.

_> You sent at 02:14: Fuck it you’re right._  
_> You sent at 02:14: Sent it.  
_ _> You sent at 02:14: Thank you, Tony_

_> Received from Sweetheart at 02:15: Got it babe  
_ _> Received from Sweetheart at 02:15: Kick ass tomorrow_

***

When Steve rolled out of bed two hours later, a notification on his phone informed him that Tony had replied to his email last night thirty minutes after receiving it. He needed all of a minute to download the file and upload it to Blackboard. Steve knew he should feel bad, but he really didn’t have time to care. Having a little more energy in the tank for practice this morning so he wouldn’t let the battalion down was more important.

Practice was as good as he could have hoped for on two hours of sleep; adrenaline made up for a lot, but he’d need to work on his sprints later, and by the time they hit the showers, he was dead on his feet. Barely conscious of anything happening around him, Steve went through the motions of rinsing off, getting dressed, and scarfing down three substantial helpings of lunch at the cafeteria before jogging across campus to his communications lecture.

He got back to his dorm at three, and didn’t open his eyes again until five hours later when the ringing phone woke him up. His Sweetheart was calling.

“The Ranger Challenge? That’s what you were doing this morning, the fucking _Ranger Challenge_? On two hours of sleep?”

Steve grunted into the phone in a way he hoped conveyed ‘no.’

“That’s ten miles of marching and the Army fitness test, on top of weapons assembly, which already—”

Steve grunted again, a little more insistent this time in his effort to form a ‘no,’ but his tongue was heavy and his head was foggy and neither would cooperate enough to allow him to speak.

Tony shut up immediately, but it only made Steve worry more. The only thing worse than a rambling Tony was a silent Tony.

“Are you,” Tony whispered in a slow, gentle tone, “are you in the hospital? Is—Steve, are you—grunt once if you’re alive.”

Steve grunted once, then shoved himself up on his hands and knees. He couldn’t quite make it to his feet, but when he dropped on his ass at least he was sitting upright in his bed. That was one step closer to being awake.

“Grunt twice if you’re in the hospital.”

“Tony, sweetheart,” Steve rasped with a deep rumble that left Tony whimpering in reply. “Just woke up.”

“I can hear that,” Tony whispered after a brief silence. “Should I let you sleep?”

“No,” Steve said with a big yawn, “gotta work. Gotta finish everything due next week. The Challenge is Saturday, and diving starts up on Monday again.”

“Fuck. You’re making _me_ stress out,” Tony muttered. “Steve, it’s already late. One night of sleep before the Challenge won’t cut it, come on, you know that. What do you have left to work on?”

“Econ for Tuesday, art assignment due Monday, that’s almost done. Comm isn’t due until Wednesday, that one’s pretty straight-forward, but I have a test in French on Friday.”

“I’m doing your econ,” Tony said without leaving any room for Steve to argue. “Rest tonight, and don’t do more than ROTC and lectures until Saturday. And,” he added as soon as Steve tried to respond. “My schedule is free, I want to be there. I’ll be at the Commonwealth tomorrow.”

“Tony, don’t be ridiculous, you’re right across the river,” Steve tried to say, but Tony wasn’t having it.

“I’m not patronizing you, Steve,” Tony told him, gentling his tone as if he knew it was a sore subject. “Patronizing you would be hacking into the database and fixing your grades. And trust me, that’s infinitely easier than driving across the bridge and checking into a hotel. I can’t do much to help, but if you’d just fucking let me, I can help you in economics, and take you away from your snoring roommate for a few nights before you do something insanely physical.”

Steve listened to Tony’s argument without interrupting him. He needed to do well this weekend, but he couldn’t do it at the expense of his grades. More importantly, there was something about having Tony next to him that made him feel like he could take on the world and come out on top. Having him close through the challenge would be a dream come true.

“Thank you, Tony,” Steve eventually said, “really. I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s a first,” Tony said, a big, relieved smile so clear in his voice that Tony couldn’t even manage to tease Steve about it. “I don’t buy it.”

Steve probably should have rolled his eyes or snarked back, but some indescribable knot loosened in his chest, and Steve felt warm and content deep in his bones.

“Okay, maybe I have _one_ thing to say,” Steve admitted, a touch sheepish. “Could you get us a different room this time?”

He could practically hear the question mark on Tony’s expression. “You didn’t like the BU theme?”

“I do like it,” Steve promised, then pursed his lips and bit the bullet. “It’s just hard to …you know. _Perform_ , when there’s a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. hanging over the bed. It’s like he’s judging me or something.”

Tony made a strangled sound, like he wanted to laugh but couldn’t believe what he had heard at the same time. “Sorry, MLK is _what?_ ”

“Last time we were at the Commonwealth, it’s,” Steve cleared his throat took another glance around his room to be sure his roommate was gone and not hiding somewhere in their room to eavesdrop for no good reason. “You were face down, I was, I was holding onto the headboard and, and fucking you. God, it was so good, baby, you were so good, the sounds you were making, I was going out of my mind—”

Tony purred softly in reply. “If I don’t remember, will you talk me through it?”

“ _Tony_ ,” Steve complained, “that’s not the point! The point is, I looked up for one second between positions and he was right there. Staring at me. I was face to face with MLK’s portrait.”

There was a quiet pause on Tony’s end, but this time he sounded genuinely baffled. “Was that why you rolled us over? MLK?”

Steve facepalmed and tried to muffle his whine of embarrassment, but Tony must have heard him anyway.

“No MLK, got it,” he promised, then with a slow, deep rumble in his voice, Tony asked, “Hey, Steve? You know, I asked you a question yesterday…”

“Just cause you’ve been extra bossy doesn’t mean I’m not partial to loudmouthed brunets anymore, Tony,” Steve drawled playfully.

“That’s your big turn-on?” Tony wondered innocently. “Being bossed around?”

The question was so simple, and yet Steve was already squirming. He pulled his blankets to cover his lap, rubbing slow, pacifying circles over his cock with his open palm. “Sometimes,” he admitted in a whisper, choosing his words carefully. Some things weren’t easy to share, even with an encouraging partner. Tony was unusually quiet. In words softer and gentler even than a whisper, Tony urged Steve to tell him more.

The line was quiet for a while before Steve moaned to himself and tried to explain. “There’s nothing specific… I like taking my time, but fantasy? I have one. It’s… um, there’s something about rushing, for me. When you don’t even take your clothes off, you need it so badly that you’ll… you unzip and fuck. Fuck anyone willing. They’ll spread their legs, want it so bad, like your skin’s crawling and your body’s aching and all you need is a hard, fast fuck.”

Tony husked out a quiet exhale on a breath he’d been holding too long. “Anonymous sex?” he whispered, “or you thinking of anyone?”

“It’s not about anyone, and they won’t care it’s me. It’s nothing but a trade, something necessary we both need but the details never matter. All that matters is how fast I can get my dick out to fuck them. And I fuck them hard,” he added more quietly, because even speaking the words out loud had him blushing from embarrassment and thrusting into his loose fist. “Maybe I hurt them, but it doesn’t matter. I just need to come, as fast as possible. I, I use them, and they just take it. And when it’s done, I pull out and leave, and I never care to see them again.”

“Damn,” Tony breathed softly, moaning quietly to himself. Steve didn’t need to imagine what he looked like, making such a noise, or what he might be doing for himself. He knew exactly what it was, he only had to close his eyes and remember. “Never. Never would’ve guessed that, babe, but fuck that sounds hot. Maybe… maybe someday?”

Steve’s breath caught in his throat in his shock. It was one thing to have a partner who wanted to know your fantasies, or thought they were a turn on… but someone who would consider bringing it to life?

“With you? Yeah… yeah, someday,” he whispered with a nervous excitement that spoke volumes of how eager he was to share his _someday_ , his one big fantasy, with Tony.

If only it could be someday soon.


	8. Day 8: Prostitution/Sex work *

Tony had forgotten something back at his place and promised to meet up with Steve as quickly as he could. They were going to dinner; he asked Steve to wait for him at the bar, relax after a long day. Steve had been given a key when he checked in at the desk, but he had no interest in seeing the room without Tony. Instead, he handed his things off to the concierge, who were kind enough to take his duffle and his portfolio up to the suite. Tony had said he wouldn’t be long, so Steve took his advice to sit at the bar, where he could enjoy the calm and nurse his beer until Tony got there.

He tried to block out the next few days in his mind while he had the down time. His timed sprints were much better after a full night’s rest, so he stick to light workouts - if any - until Saturday’s meet. He had French in the morning, but that was his last lecture of the week. He’d need a few hours to finish up the conte drawing of a figure in motion, and what better time than when his muse was here in person? Steve had filled a notebook (and journals and free-floating scraps of paper) with sketches of Tony during their weekend getaway in October. He had enough studies of Tony’s expressions, his eyes, his hands, his feet, his posture, and his vivid body language to finish another year’s worth of art assignments.

More than money or sleep, he treasured that notebook. Maybe he’d even show it to Tony one day.

A gentle touch slid over his neck and down his shoulder, where long fingers curled with a proprietary comfort around his bicep. Steve startled out of his thoughts and jerked his arm away. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but whoever the man was, he was about to find out that Steve was more inclined to pushing back than people gave him credit for.

Casual as he’d been with his wandering hands, the man seemed to realize he’d made an error and quickly held his hands up in apology. Still, Steve got to his feet to loom over him, and with a dangerous snarl, spat out, “Touch me again and I’ll break your wrist.”

“My apologies,” the man promised, but Steve only looked at the man with more disgust. He was clearly in his forties, and his voice was somewhere in the Batman range, if Batman came with the super-smooth velvet option. He looked expensive, with his long, salon-straightened hair and fancy manicure. Whatever he had in his wallet, he wasn’t getting away with thinking he owned Steve, too.

“That is not an apology,” Steve pointed out as the man tried to explain.

“Honest mistake, sir,” the man said as he lowered his voice, not wanting to draw more attention from the scattered afternoon crowd around them. Something about his eyes struck a chord in Steve, but he shook it off and continued to glare at the man. “This is where the, ah. Company for the evening wait.”

Steve’s outrage turned to confusion as he tried to process how an exclusive, luxury hotel across from a university campus could—wait, no. No, that part actually made perfect sense. This would be excellent hunting grounds for those of negotiable affections and means.

“What I’m here for doesn’t matter,” Steve told him, growing more indignant by the idea. Sex worker or not, people had rights. “You don’t touch anyone without permission, and certainly not before any explicit agreements are made. Casual touches in public cost extra.”

A dangerous spark of excitement gave an edge to the man’s gaze, and Steve stood there spluttering internally as the man openly ogled him from head to toe.

“Wait, I didn’t mean—” Steve tried to backpedal, but the man didn’t hear him.

“How much extra? The boyfriend experience, for the night? Twelve thousand?” the man offered casually. “No more than fourteen. The works.”

Tony could walk into the lobby at any minute and see Steve talking to this asshat old dude who so casually wore a suit that could pay Steve’s dorm fees for a semester. If this really was where sex workers were picked up, this was the last place he’d want Tony to catch him with a rich man with the wrong intentions. He really had wanted to wait to see this new suite with Tony, but the more he needed to get out of this situation, the heavier the key card in his back pocket became.

“Fuck you and your money: I’m not interested,” Steve said with a scowl. He snatched his coat off his chair, turned on his heel, and marched across the lobby to the elevators.

It took a minute or two for an elevator to get there, but when the cab got there, at least it was empty. Steve pressed the button for the sixth floor and leaned his weight back against the wall. He could finally breathe again.

The man slipped into the cab with him just as the elevator doors were closing. All too casually, he placed himself between Steve and the control panel to prevent Steve from pushing the _Door Open_ button on time. He stood too close, he smelled like cigarettes, and he leered at Steve openly with a cheshire cat grin.

“Playing hard to get?” he purred, licking his teeth in his obvious delight. “Think you’re too good for my money, Steve? Well, every man has a price.”

Did elevators have security cameras? What were the odds that a man like this had enough lawyers to put Steve away for defending himself?

It took a minute for Steve to process what he had heard.

“I never told you my name,” he said slowly, and startled by the possibility that this man might know him, that Steve had somehow forgotten a creep like this, Steve took a closer look.

It was his eyes that gave Tony away.

Whatever change Tony noticed in Steve’s posture the moment he realized what was going on, he stumbled back, howling with laughter. The voice modulator, wherever it was, worked so well even his laugh was unrecognizable to Steve’s ears, but the way he laughed - the way he moved, his shameless half-dance, half-wiggle to have gotten one over on Steve - was so patently him Steve’s knees almost gave away with relief.

The elevator came to a halt on their floor, and Steve stumbled after Tony’s lead down the hall. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he rasped, scrubbing a hand over his face. When had he started sweating? “I thought I was gonna go away for assaulting someone expensive.”

Tony snickered and turned a corner. It was a dead end, a little corner where a potted ficus lived and the hallway ended in a five foot window with Victorian arches. Steve turned to see if they’d missed a step when Tony crowded into his personal space again, backing Steve up against the window.

Even now when Steve knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was his Tony, it was still so strange to have someone who looked, sounded, and smelled so different pressing up against his body.

“I don’t care how expensive they are,” Tony whispered in his unrecognizably older, darker, and deeper voice. “Anyone harrasses you like that, or touches you, you can always push back. I don’t care how deep their pockets are, or how vicious their lawyers are. Mine are deeper, and mine are the best.”

“Okay, sweetheart, you’re starting to sound a _teeeny_ bit like a comic book villain,” Steve pointed out, to Tony’s obvious delight.

“Then why don’t you put me in my place, soldier?” Tony purred, then, as if by magic, he assumed the posture and presence of a self-made ne’er-do-well with a taste for purchased affection. “Forget the boyfriend experience, darling: if you give it to me hard and fast right here, right now, I’ll give you five big ones. All you have to do is make me come before anybody finds us.”

Steve’s heart would have melted if his cock wasn’t suddenly hogging all the blood. “Sweetheart,” he whispered, but hell if it didn’t feel so messed up to say that to this strange face looking back at him. “I appreciate what you’re doing for me, but I’m not, I won’t hurt you—I don’t have lube, and you’re not—I mean, uh. We don’t have time to get ready.”

“Babe… what do you think I was doing while you were at the bar?” Tony asked rhetorically, and before Steve could make any useless guesses, Tony slapped a condom into Steve’s hand. He unzipped his trousers, undid his belt, and pushed his pants down over his ass before Steve could even pretend to want to stop him.

The thought that someone might turn the corner and see them any second left Steve reacting on impulse - he took Tony by the arms and pressed him into the corner, blocking him from view with his own bulk. It was only then, with Tony’s back turned to him that Steve noticed something shiny catching the light from between Tony’s full, firm ass cheeks.

“Found your treasure yet?” Tony wondered with a teasing innocence, arching his back and standing on the balls of his feet to push his ass up for Steve.

They were minutes from their suite, minutes from having absolute privacy to enjoy their time together uninterrupted. A security attendant could notice them on the cameras at any second, or a housekeeper might turn the corner on their way to the elevator and see them. Every passing moment increased their chance of getting caught.

Now or never.

Steve pressed up against Tony’s back, boxing him in and pinning Tony to the wall until all Tony could see was Steve, and a glimpse of the apartments across the street through the tall window. The soft skin behind Tony’s ear, and the smooth, tan skin of his neck that always beckoned Steve were close enough to taste, but this wasn’t the time or place for Steve to indulge in any possessive urges.

“As much as I’d love to test the range of this modulator you’re using,” he growled against the shell of Tony’s ear, “I don’t want to hear a sound out of you. This won’t take long.”

Steve purposefully stood close enough so Tony could feel him unzipping his pants and pulling his cock out. Then it was the work of seconds to ease the plug out of Tony’s ass, and even less than that to roll the condom on. The rim of Tony’s ass pulsed with the loss of the toy, stretched and well slick from the excessive lube. It wasn’t the longest or fattest toy in Tony’s collection, of that Steve had no doubt, but it was enough to get the job started.

He pawed at Tony’s ass and grasped him in two firm handfuls. Steve pressed his thumbs into Tony’s hole and pulled, stretching him open with force and no patience. With a vice-like grip that left Tony softly whimpering in pain, Steve tugged Tony’s ass up at an angle and spread his tight hole wide before forcing his cock in a single thrust. Tony preemptively bit down on his lip and managed to muffle the sudden cry tearing from his throat into a deep, muted groan, but he couldn’t stop the sudden shudder of shock and discomfort that rolled through his body. His body grew stiff and tensed up instinctively, but Steve fucked him through it, pounding into his tight ass even as Tony’s body spasmed and struggled to accommodate him.

The soft whimpers and gusting moans quickly became louder and more frequent. Steve recognized the sound of Tony’s approaching his orgasm, and like a well-conditioned partner, his body responded instinctively. He swept his big palms up to Tony’s hips and all but lifted him off his feet until Tony was arching his back on tip-toe. In his new position, every thrust of Steve’s cock grazed Tony’s prostate, and Tony’s eyes rolled back as the heady, intoxicating combination of Steve’s punishing, powerful thrusts and the electric waves of pleasure flooded his senses.

Tony’s transition from discomfort and pain to overwhelming pleasure happened incredibly fast. He squirmed and whimpered helplessly as his body struggled to give itself time to adjust, but Steve’s grip was merciless. He held Tony firmly in position as he fucked into him hard and fast, pounding into him chasing his own orgasm without any outward concern for Tony’s pleasure.

What little control Tony had to keep from filling the hallways with his groans of delirious satisfaction no longer stopped him from forming senseless words begging Steve for more. He was so close, he just needed _more_ , he needed to be used, to be bruised. To _be Steve’s_.

Steve let go of Tony’s hips to grab a fistful of Tony’s hair and jerk his head back, forcing him into a backbend. Tony’s mouth fell open with a wincing gasp of pain, and Steve capitalized on the opportunity to force four fingers into Tony’s exposed mouth. Tony gagged and sucked down around his fingers in his surprise, and it was enough to plug up the noises Tony had been making.

Tony sucked and salivated over Steve’s thick fingers like a man possessed, and once Steve wrapped his free hand around Tony’s heavy, aching cock to jerk him off, it was only seconds before Tony’s whole body seized around Steve with a violent climax. Tony’s moans and drool spilled out in equal measure over Steve’s fingers and down his forearm, and Steve curled his fingers in Tony’s mouth, stuffing it full and leaving Tony panting for breath as Steve continued pounding into him through Tony’s body spasms and involuntary clenching around his cock, until finally, _finally_ Steve’s hard rhythm abruptly became a series of aggressive, desperate thrusts as he lost himself to the hot, greedy pulsing clutch of Tony’s body.

Panting and dazed, Steve glanced back over his shoulder. By some miracle, they had gone undiscovered, and in his rush to keep it that way, he pulled out as quickly as he could without hurting Tony, tied off the condom, and tossed it into the potted plant a few feet away. They were both zipping up when Tony tripped over his unmoving feet and slumped backwards into Steve’s arms. 

Steve caught him. Tony gazed up at him with a dopey smile and half-lidded eyes, euphoric in his afterglow. Steve smiled back and bent to gather up Tony’s legs in his arms, lifting him in a bridal carry. Between softly whispered words of praise and affection, Tony murmured the number to their room. He nuzzled into Steve’s chest, and tired as he was, all that mattered was that Tony trusted Steve. Steve would not to let him down.


	9. Day 9: Sthenolagnia (Strength/muscles), lingerie

“Is that him?”

Steve jumped in his seat at the sound of Sharon’s voice, his hand shooting straight up to avoid smudging his charcoal figure drawing. It was part of his midterm assignment, a revived memory of Tony lounging in the bed loft of the treehouse under a glass roof and warm sunlight, naked and facing away from view. His fingers curled into a loose fist in his sleep, his hair fell in soft waves around his face, and the long, lean lines of his body whispered of a subtle power others dreamed to possess.

“It’s _a_ him,” Steve replied, adjusting in his seat, half-heartedly busying himself with putting little touches here and there for highlights and shadows while Sharon got herself settled on her end of the work bench.

Before their exams, Dr. Siharulidze would leave a graduate student in charge of observing the classroom for certain hours after class for those undergrads who needed the space to work on their final projects. Sharon was bringing out her pens, and Steve guessed she’d chosen to do one of the parts of her midterm project in ink. It wasn’t his favorite, but then again, if he was as good as her with the ink, maybe he would have liked it more.

Once she had settled in and gotten to work, it was easy for Steve to fall in as well. Somehow, it was easier to concentrate when people were seated and working than when they packing or unpacking. Chatting, for that matter, rarely disrupted them either.

“Thought you were too busy to work on the assignment today,” Steve said in monotone, moving on from the superficial points to flesh out Tony’s strong calves and elegant legs. The time Steve could spend just on his ankles and feet alone bordered on alarming.

“Sam had a bromergency,” Sharon said with a wry smile, not once looking up from her work. “Remember the super hot blond with the biceps? The one that makes you look normal?”

Steve rolled his eyes but elected not to comment. “I think they call him Thor.”

“Hipster parents,” Sharon sighed to herself before continuing. “Apparently he only owns plaid flannel, and he has a date with a Harvard super genius so they’ve called an emergency Superbro Caucus—”

“They really need to stop calling it that,” Steve muttered under his breath, and Sharon smirked in agreement.

“ _Anyway_ , long story short, all available Air Force cadets are marching on the Gap and Banana Republic to get him a decent outfit for tonight’s date.”

Without looking up from his drawing, Steve said, “If plaid flannel is all he owns, and she already agreed to the date, wouldn’t that mean she liked him in plaid flannel?”

“Guess he wants to look a little more special for the first date,” Sharon supposed, shrugging to herself and glancing Steve’s way as she asked, “It’s been five months for you and Tony, hasn’t it?”

“Almost,” Steve agreed without having to count. Some things you just knew, like how Valentine’s Day was days away, and how the six-month anniversary of their first date would land on the Ides of March. Steve wasn’t a suspicious man, but some coincidences were better than others.

“You’re not going to wear anything special for that?”

“Maybe? I’d rather plan a memorable date than a memorable outfit,” Steve admitted absently as he shaded in the gentle arch of Tony’s exposed foot. “Pretty sure Tony’s happy as long as he can get me out of it without scissors.”

Sharon snorted at the suggestion. “That’s very possible, he is a man,” she conceded. “But sometimes… I don’t know. Doesn’t have to be that weird. I wore Sam’s flight suit and special occasion-underwear for his birthday this year,” she added casually, and Steve looked up with his eyebrows somewhere in the zipcode of his hairline. Sharon didn’t have to look at him to smirk knowingly at his expression. “Let’s just say, it was a hit.”

“Even if I wanted to,” Steve said after a short pause to give his full attention to correcting the shading around Tony’s ankle, and even when he carried on with his answer, he still sounded distracted. “There isn’t much ‘special occasion underwear’ for men.”

“Have you looked?” Sharon asked like she knew the answer already, and Steve’s dubious shrug only confirmed her initial suspicion. “Exactly, so how can you be sure?”

“Because if there were, the best of it would be in Tony’s closet,” Steve replied matter of factly. On her side of the work bench, Sharon only hummed softly in agreement.

They worked in silence for some time, and Steve had moved on from Tony’s legs to the plush fleece blanket and soft cotton linens draped around him when Sharon stood up to stretch her back.

“I could use a break,” she said innocently enough. She looked like she was on a mission, and Steve knew better than to get in the way. While she dug around in her bag, he carefully placed the protective sheet over his charcoal drawing and tugged it into the center of the table.

“Alright, I’m ready,” he said when he was satisfied his drawing was safe. “Come at me, bro.”

Sharon rolled her eyes, but she came around the workbench all the same to plant herself next to him and open her laptop in front of him.

And then, she did nothing. Steve side-eyed her after a few seconds of awkward silence, and she just gestured at the computer and said, “Google it!”

“…Google what?”

She sighed to herself and pulled the computer to herself, clearly determined to complete her mission one way or another. “Men’s…. Lingerie…”

Sharon clicked the first link that popped up, something called _XDress_ , and Steve balked so fast he nearly fell out of his seat. He scrambled to his feet in outrage, suddenly needing to put space between himself and _that_.

“What in pluperfect hell–is that a _tutu_?” Steve cried, his arms crossed at his chest one second and fisted at his hips the next. That didn’t just look uncomfortable, it looked _wrong_. At least, for him. “I am _not_ wearing a fucking tutu. Tony would laugh me out of the city!”

“Why?” Sharon wondered, angling the computer towards Steve in quiet encouragement to come back and look himself. “Does a tutu make you less of a man?”

Steve frowned at her and tried to decide on whether to cross his arms or plant his hands on his hips this time. “Tutu is not lingerie.”

“But the rest of it is. Don’t get hung up on the _one_ scary pink thing.”

Steve said something under his breath, but came back to the bench eventually and clicked and scrolled around to appease her, until something genuinely caught his eye. He stopped, his fingers hovering over the mousepad like a predator at the ready. Carefully, he glanced at Sharon without turning his head as if to see if he’d been caught, but she was too busy pretending to check her nails to let him know she was watching like a hawk.

So, in the relative privacy of Sharon at least pretending not to look, he clicked his way to the lace garter tights. It wasn’t even real lace or real garters, it was _tights_ in the design of lace garters. There were only two sizes available, and Steve totally knew how to put tights on. Maybe this wasn’t so scary after all.

“Garters don’t come with the underwear, did you know that?” Sharon commented simply from his elbow. “Common misconception.”

Steve sniffed to himself, but didn’t say anything as he opened up a new tab to look through the lacy bottoms. He scrolled through slowly, trying not to look as overwhelmed as he felt by all the different designs - so many of them looked the same! - and the variety of colors, but when he next glanced at Sharon, she was smiling down at her fingers.

At least, he was on the right track. He could do this.

Some time passed, and eventually Sharon nudged him with her elbow. “Want me to step out so you can make your choices and pay in peace?”

The few minutes had been all Steve had needed to get his mind around the prospect of ‘special occasion lingerie,’ and after all, Valentine’s was just around the corner. So, instead of balking or feeling embarrassed, he turned the computer towards Sharon to invite her to see the small collection he’d put in his cart.

“Actually,” he said, partly sheepish but mostly eager, “what you think?”

***

Tony had arranged for their preferred suite at the Commonwealth well in advance, but a last minute meeting with his committee meant Steve arrived with hours to spare before Tony showed up. He treated himself to a long, warm bath before trying anything else. Sharon (and Carol, who quickly had noticed something was up and demanded to be let in on the secret) had approved his plan, but there was still the slightest chance that Tony wouldn’t like it. The last thing Steve wanted to do was ruin their first Valentine’s Day, or send some weird signal like he was bored or unappreciative of what they already had.

But, he wanted to try. Tony often went out of his way to find ways of bringing excitement into their relationship, and the least Steve could do was try.

_> Received from Sweetheart at 18:18: FINALLY  
> Received from Sweetheart at 18:18: on my way i’m starivng_

_> You sent at 18:19: I’ll order you the steak?  
> You sent at 18:20: your surprise is ready_

Tony had been guessing all week what this surprise was, but his closest guess was that Steve would be wearing his dress uniform to their date. Steve had told him he wasn’t wrong, but that it was a private surprise. So instead of a romantic, Thursday night Valentine’s Day dinner, they planned on a Friday night dinner and a Thursday together in what they had come to call their suite.

_> Received from Sweetheart at 18:22: is it strip poker?  
> Received from Sweetheart at 18:23: is it sex poker? _

Steve was on the call to order their meals when Tony’s second text came in. He rolled his eyes to himself, but changed their order to include two bottles of champagne, then hung up to answer Tony.

_> You sent at 18:24: it’s not sex poker just get your gorgeous butt here so i can make you the luckiest man in the world_

Steve put his phone away once he sent his last message, happy to avoid the whirlwind of Tony’s last minute guessing spree. He pulled his boots on, then straightened to adjust his thong.

Now, all he had to do was wait.

***

There was a soft beep from the front door before the door swung open.

“Babe, there are these giant bottles of chocolate body paint left on the shelves. The sales are going to be insane, we have got to capitalize first thing tomorrow morning,” Tony was saying as he wandered into the living room. “Nothing against your charcoal and pencil work, but—”

When Steve stepped out of the bedroom and let his robe spill to the floor, Tony cut himself off so abruptly he practically swallowed his tongue. The silence was deafening. Steve wouldn’t let himself twitch, as if he was comfortable standing in the middle of a well lit room in nothing but black garters, a black lacy thong, and his beat up combat boots. He wore his dog tags around his neck, the way Tony liked.

Eventually, Tony choked on air and stumbled forward with awkward, heavy feet until he could finally get his shaking, eager hands on Steve’s oiled up pecs, his pronounced biceps… and then swept his hands down Steve’s broad frame to curl over the lace around Steve’s narrow hips.

“You… you,” Tony gasped, words failing him at every turn. Steve grinned down at him then, and leaning in, he brushed a kiss over Tony’s floundering, parted lips.

“I love you, sweetheart,” Steve whispered against the corner of Tony’s lips. “Happy Valentine’s.”


	10. Day 10: Macro/micro

Patrick was away for a week to visit his girlfriend in Connecticut, so Steve had suggested they study for his exam in his dorm. After all, when you didn’t try to cram the entire lives of two strangers into it, his room was quite spacy. He had spent the whole morning cleaning up to get rid of that stale smell of old gym shoes and library books, but it wasn’t until Tony texted to say he had parked and would be up any minute that Steve realized he’d never be ready. This was the first time Tony was staying longer than the minute it took to introduce himself to Patrick the roommate or Steve’s friends. But this time they were planning to spend three days and two nights together ahead of Steve’s midterm, and Steve could have scrubbed the whole floor on his hands and knees and it _still_ would be filthier than anything Tony had ever lived in. 

And now, he’d associate that filth with Steve. 

There was a knock at his door and Steve’s heart skipped a beat. What had he been thinking? Having Tony in his space sounded like such a dream when meant fooling around in his bunk bed, but _how were they going to fit in a twin bed?_

“Steve?” he heard Tony calling from the other side of the door, and Steve shook himself awake. 

He gathered up his courage and opened the door. 

Tony was balancing two boxes of large pizzas in one hand, and two padded carrier bags in the other. Without thinking, Steve rushed to take the bags from him and urged Tony to follow him in. 

“What is this, Tony?” Steve asked even as he sat the bags down on his desk to snoop around. One was stuffed with chicken wings and Chinese food containers, and the other had two six packs of beer. “You carried all of this up from the parking lot? Tony—”

“Don’t. Don’t argue about the food,” Tony told him, setting the pizzas down on Patrick’s cleared desk. He kept looking around the room in his curiosity while still gravitating towards Steve, until he could weasel his way into Steve’s arms without looking away from all the scattered mementos and clues into Steve’s life that he otherwise rarely witnessed. 

They stood together for a while, swaying comfortably in silence. Steve nuzzled into Tony’s hair and breathed him in, slow and steady, while listening to the proverbial wheels spinning in Tony’s head. 

“Let me guess,” Tony eventually murmured, scratching at Steve’s side in a way he usually did if he felt particularly cheeky. Steve lifted his head and gave him a preemptively dry look. “That’s your Matthew Mitcham poster?” 

“Hey, don’t joke about Mitcham,” Steve pouted without irony. “He’s a hero of mine.”

Tony gave him a squeeze and smiled up at him with nothing but affection. “Can’t I even pretend to be jealous?”

“Nope,” Steve said with a laugh, leaning in closer still to press a chaste kiss to Tony’s grinning lips. “Jealousy, envy, possessiveness, they’re all ugly.”

“Funny you should say that,” Tony observed with a quiet, thoughtful hum. “Did you know that Rhodey always knows when we’ve spent time together? It’s almost as if there are visible signs on my body that—”

Steve bit his lip to keep from laughing and quickly brought his hand up to cup over Tony’s mouth. Tony only grinned up at him at first, but it wasn't long before they were both laughing about it. 

“If that’s a problem,” Steve whispered, his words warm and buoyant with his happiness. “I’ll put the next ones where he’ll never see notice.”

Before Tony had to wonder what he meant, Steve’s hand slipped down past Tony’s hips and cupped his ass in greedy handfuls. Tony’s teeth scraped over his own bottom lip as his gaze swept down to Steve’s mouth and up again. 

But then he gave himself a shake and gently pushed at Steve’s shoulder. “Love where your head’s at, but econ first. Come on, we might as well get started,” he added, to Steve’s mild disappointment. It wasn’t like Steve didn’t think they’d work; after all, that was the main reason Tony had come down for the three days while Patrick was away. He had just hoped it would be more naked tutoring than the traditional, sexless kind. 

They pushed away the furniture and got situated on the floor. Between the boxes of food and drinks, Tony created little stacks pairing lecture notes with assignments. He had gone through the trouble of drafting summaries for each stack that highlighted the main concepts covered, the relevant formulas and charts, and the question types Sima favored in the assigned work. 

Steve couldn’t believe his eyes. He had expected something more straightforward, like doing his homework problems together, not learning the whole class from the ground up. When Tony had found the time to even approach this kind of organization for _his_ class was enough to leave him speechless, but Tony acted like it was something entirely expected and typical. 

He picked up the stack for day one, and together they got started. 

*** 

Days, weeks, months passed by in the first four hours of talking over the material at hand, and the last thing Steve remembered was that they decided to take a break. An few smacks on his shoulder slowly convinced Steve to peel his heavy eyelids open, and he lifted his head to see what was going on. He could feel the crusty drool trailing from his open mouth down to his chin, where it was still thick and wet and awkward. Absently, he scrubbed at his mouth and chin with his hand while trying to focus on what Tony was saying. 

“Babe, if you’re going to sleep on my ass,” he drawled, mildly stern, “don’t bite.”

Steve grunted in question, but as he blinked his eyes open and took in more of the space around him, particularly under him, he realized Tony wasn’t joking. Steve’s arms were wrapped around Tony’s waist and legs, and in his sleep, he had settled his head on Tony’s gloriously firm and supple cheeks. 

“‘s not easy,” Steve slurred in his defense, but instead of putting his head back down to indulge some more, he crawled up in bed to stretch out beside Tony. “Hi.”

Tony laughed quietly at him, but he wriggled an inch or two closer and said, “Hi back.”

“You know, I was thinking,” Steve said, ever so casually. “Maybe we could let that be enough econ for the day? Maybe… we could go see a movie?”

“Counter offer,” Tony said with a grin, as if he’d expected Steve to try to get out of studying all along. “Since we reviewed the material already, why don’t we have a quiz?” he wondered. “Something… maybe more motivating than your other tests.”

Steve eyed him suspiciously, though other parts of his body were far less subtle about what he hoped Tony was suggesting. “Tell me more.”

“How about, I’ll ask you a question,” Tony said with a simple, matter of fact tone. “And for every answer you get right… I’ll take one piece of clothing off.”

The laws of supply and demand had never been more engaging. “Sweetheart, you got yourself a deal.”


	11. Day 11: Object insertion (part 1/2)

Their anniversary was days away. Tony was losing his mind. He didn’t want to lose Steve, too. 

“You’re out of your mind.”

“It’s romantic,” Carol disagreed, and Rhodey jumped as if he’d been kicked under the table. “Maybe scale down on the flowers.”

“One bouquet, Tony.” 

Tony must have looked about as offended as he felt by the suggestion, because Carol made the rare effort to gentle her voice when she continued Rhodey’s train of thought. “There are good restaurants in Boston, you don’t need to fly to Paris.”

“My mom liked Paris,” Tony said quietly, and while that seemed to make sense to Carol, Rhodey loudly cleared his throat. 

“That’s what I’m trying to say,” Rhodey said with a long-suffering expression. “This should be about you and Steve, not what other people like. What does _Steve_ like?”

“Steve would like Paris,” Carol assured them both before Tony had to defend his choices, and Tony brightened with a glimmer of new-found hope. “He loves art, he enjoys French music, language, culture.”

“We have an apartment on the Seine, facing the Eiffel Tower,” Tony told Carol in a rush of excitement, and Rhodey groaned at Tony’s transparent attempt to get her on his side. “The view is beautiful, and there’s a museum of indigenous artwork from around the world at the end of the block.”

Carol looked from Tony to Rhodey and back again. “He’s making a good case,” she told Rhodey quietly. “Steve’s never left the country, and he loves all of those things.”

“You’re not thinking this through. It’s a good idea because you’re informed of it,” Rhodey reminded her. “He wants to do this to Steve as a surprise. Hell, Tony, do you really want to spend your anniversary in your parents’ bed?”

“I can buy a new mattress,” Tony said, but the idea still made him grimace. “Uh. Commission a new bed?”

Carol could see his plan falling apart. She shook her head. “Maybe save this for a one-year anniversary? That doesn’t sound like something you wouldn’t want to rush.” 

Two against one. Tony conceded Paris. They all went back to their milkshakes with varying degrees of enthusiasm while they tried to think of reasonable alternatives. 

“Didn’t you say he liked the tree house in upstate New York?” Rhodey wondered sometime after inhaling his large chocolate malt. “Can you go back there?”

A chilly tingle of excitement ran down Tony spine. _The tree house._ Screw Paris, Rhodey was right, the tree house was perfect. Tony snatched up his phone and navigated to the bookmarked reservations page. 

But when he calendar finally loaded, something was terribly wrong. There had to be a mistake. Tony reloaded the page, and again for a third time, until his shock slowly twisted into heartache. 

The tree house was unavailable for the whole weekend. 

“Hey, Tony,” Rhodey said gently, because of course he knew what Tony’s hangdog expression meant. “Listen, we’ll figure something else out. It’s okay.”

“No,” Tony insisted, thumbing over to his contacts and scrolling down the list for Annelise’s number. “I’ll—I’ll outbid the other guy, or, I don’t know, I’ll buy it,” Tony muttered to himself with a self-deprecating grimace. “Why didn’t I fucking buy it last year? Steve loved that place—Annelise, hi.”

He shuffled out of the booth and made his way out of the diner as he tried to explain the situation to the owner. This was business, this was what he’d been groomed for all his life. One way or another, the tree house would be his. 

***

Except, it wasn’t. 

The night of March 14th approached, and Tony still didn’t have a plan. No amount of bribery had worked, and while Annelise was open to selling it for five times the property’s value, but she wouldn’t sell before May after fulfilling all her current reservations. It wasn’t ideal, but Tony paid her a lump sum to stop anyone from making new reservations while he thought it over. 

Despite failing to plan any of the things Tony hoped for on their special day, Steve arrived on Tony’s doorstep on Wednesday afternoon with a smile that warmed Tony in every way that mattered. He had never felt so happy and yet so upset to see someone before. Tony had failed; Steve deserved better than this plain room. 

Steve made for the bed as soon as he got in, shedding clothes and stretching out under the covers with the proprietary leisure of a tomcat. Tony crawled in after him at a more subdued pace. Steve had taken one look at him before his expression grew concerned and he rolled up on his elbow to lean in close. “Sweetheart,” he whispered softly, reaching for Tony’s hand and bringing it to his lips for a kiss. “What’s bothering you? Talk to me.”

He looked so worried that Tony couldn’t help the truth from spilling out of him. “I’m an asshole,” he confessed with quiet words. “I’m an asshole who can’t plan ahead, keep track of time, or—”

Steve squeezed Tony’s fingers to get his attention, and when that didn’t work, he scraped his teeth over the back of Tony’s hand. That finally distracted Tony from his rambling and brought his attention back to Steve. 

“Tony, we’ve talked about this,” Steve reminded him with a smile warm in his voice. “You’re stating an opinion, not a fact. You don’t get to decide or tell me what my opinion is. So,” he finished, “what happened?” 

Tony pressed his lips together before he continued doing what they had agreed they (he) wouldn’t do. He needed time to brace himself for the truth, but eventually he nodded his understanding and said, “I didn’t make any plans for our anniversary.”

“You made time,” Steve said gently, but Tony could only roll his eyes. That was literally the least he could have done. 

“That’s all I care about, Tony. I mean it,” Steve promised when Tony only gave him a dry look in return. “You’ve been working on Dum-E around the clock. I know you’ve been busier than usual, I haven’t seen you in weeks.” 

“That’s _worse!_ Fuck, I’m sorry—”

But Steve only laughed and crawled closer to kiss Tony quiet. “You’re amazing, that’s what you are,” Steve said with what Tony swore was a mischievous grin. Before Tony could explain that Steve must have misheard, that they were about to spend their first and only six month anniversary in his stale old dorm room, Steve said, “I knew this would be a busy time for you, so I made plans this time. Would you like to hear them?”

Tony must have looked as articulate as a guppy fish the way his mouth opened and closed without uttering a rotten syllable. Opened and closed, opened and closed, until Steve only snickered and rolled away to grab his phone off the nightstand. 

He showed Tony the reservation confirmation for the tree house— _their_ tree house—that was emailed in the last week of December. Steve has made these plans three months in advance. Steve had been so sure they’d make it to six months that he’d paid— 

“974 dollars?” Tony choked out, staring up at Steve in shock. The pure, unmitigated guilt of all the sacrifices Steve must have endured to afford this hit Tony like a punch in the gut. His heart was racing and his stomach was turning inside out, but before he could speak, Steve gently covered Tony’s lips with his hand.

“Do I comment on the cost of anything you pay for?” Steve reminded him gently, but before Tony could stop himself, he glared back at Steve’s nonchalance. 

“I have more money than I know what to do with! Spending it with you makes me happy, you said you understood—” 

“Sweetheart, hang on a second—breathe,” Steve said with a quiet laugh, pressing a soft kiss to the back of Tony’s hand. He gave Tony a few seconds to regroup before explaining himself. “Is it so hard to imagine I feel the same? I might not have as much as you, but… my tuition is covered, and I paid my bills. After that, you, our time together, that’s what I want to spend my money on, too. And if you argue with me about my spending,” Steve added when Tony open his mouth again, “then I’ll start arguing with you about yours.”

Unbidden, a familiar knot started to make itself known in Tony’s throat. Quickly, he looked down at Steve’s phone before his eyes gave him away. The phone had been idle too long, but Tony stared at the black screen as he tried to will his tears away. 

The thing was, Tony always paid. People who weren’t Rhodey never paid for Tony. More often than not, people only stayed as long as he paid. 

“People don’t… pay. Not for me,” he mumbled. The mattress shifted as Steve pressed up on his hands and knees, but Tony didn’t dare look up. Even when Steve got his arms around him and drew Tony into his lap, Tony wouldn’t meet his gaze. Instead, he curled closer and pressed his wet face into Steve’s chest. 

For a long time, Steve didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. There was an unwavering strength in Steve’s arms, and as beautiful and thick as his biceps were, the strength of his arms wasn’t a physical quality. There was something about having Steve’s arms around him that made Tony feel like nothing could hurt him. That Steve would never allow such a thing to happen.

Still, Tony wouldn’t look up at him. Steve pressed a soft kiss to the back of Tony’s neck, letting his lips linger over Tony’s skin. “I care about _you_ , Tony,” he whispered, his lips brushing over Tony’s skin with every word. “You, not the money. Never the money.”

Ironically, the reminder of how little money mattered to Steve always made Tony feel worse. If Steve didn’t care about the money even a little, Tony didn’t have a chance. Soon enough, Steve would get bored of him, and without the draw of money to keep his attention, Steve would leave him, too. 

Tony heard Steve rumble in his discontent and pull the blankets up around them before he realized he’d been shivering. Steve must have mistaken Tony’s shivering for feeling cold, but Tony didn’t correct him. He indulged in the way Steve bundled him up closer and gently rested his cheek against the back of Tony’s head as they sat together in silence for a while. 

Tony was mulling over the depressing paradox of how a relationship could feel so stable and yet so fleeting when Steve spoke. 

“You know,” he said, sounding too casual to be genuine. It was enough to catch Tony’s attention and shake off his own insecurities to listen to what Steve had to say. “Before you, I didn’t really… I didn’t think I’d be able to be with someone long term.”

Tony blinked in confusion. Steve? Gorgeous, devoted, hardworking student-athlete who treated everyone with respect and never half-assed a day of his life? He tried to pick his head up to look Steve in the eyes, but Steve didn’t move his head as he spoke. So instead, Tony wormed his arms around one of Steve’s big biceps and squeezed tight, holding him in return to offer what comfort he could. 

“Sometimes, I get …a little rough. I’ve even been rough with you,” Steve said slowly, choosing his words with care. “I don’t mean to. I never mean to. But, something happens, a thought or a word, and it’s like a switch inside me. I have scared away partners in the past. Scared myself, if I’m honest. I never even thought I’d be able to tell anyone that I fantasize about hurting someone during sex—”

Tony finally sat up in such a rush that Steve had to pick his head up and look at him.

“Wait, Steve—stop, stop talking,” he whispered urgently, and before Steve regretted staring at him in surprise, Tony took him gently by the chin and made sure to look Steve in the eye. “Intense and rough is not the same as abuse or disrespect. I’ve always known exactly what to expect with you, or you’ve checked in with me. That’s not hurting me, Steve, that is some hot, kinky sex I don’t want to stop. So if you’re dead set on worrying about anything, worry about not giving me enough of it.”

Fear shuttered across Steve’s expression, and it was so unlike anything Tony had seen in his eyes that he couldn’t begin to interpret what it meant. Steve even tried to look away from him, but Tony wouldn’t let him go, and he waited patiently for Steve to lift his gaze again to meet Tony’s eyes. 

“Tony, what you’re asking… it’s humiliating,” Steve mumbled under his breath. When he didn’t continue, Tony relaxed his grip of Steve’s chin but instead gently cupped Steve’s face in his hands. Gently, he pressed his forehead against Steve’s and waited. 

“I love you. I love what we have, what we do,” Steve whispered with the urgency of a man desperate to be believed. “I don’t need more.”

Tony frowned a little to himself. Steve was being too vague, and it was difficult to pinpoint where Steve’s fear came from. “Do you think I’ll judge you?”

Steve groaned quietly, but eventually articulated himself with a subtle nod in the affirmative. 

“Do you trust me to say no if I don’t want to do it?”

This time, Steve frowned. It took him some time before he dared to shake his head no.

Tony licked his lips and tried to steady himself. Steve had been honest and Tony needed to keep a clear head. He couldn’t let the personal hurt distract him from what he wanted to say.

“Did you know, this is the longest relationship I’ve ever been in?” he said softly into the space between them. 

Steve’s lips twitched up in a proud (if shaky) little grin. “I do.”

“Did you know most my relationships ended because of money?” Tony continued, and this time, Steve’s smile faded. He picked his head up and looked at Tony with a deep frown in his expression, no doubt wondering if he somehow fell in the same category as those who used Tony for money. 

“I care about you a lot, Steve. And, uh. The idea that you… okay, this is fucking embarrassing, okay, but when you don’t want my money, or you want to pay for us? It’s… it’s stupid, maybe, whatever, but that terrifies me. That’s one less thing I can do for you, or, one less, um. One less way I can be helpful to you.”

“But you make me _happy_ , Tony,” Steve insisted. “Money makes life easier, sure, but it doesn’t make me happy.”

Tony shrugged in an expression of absolute ignorance. There wasn’t much he was unaware of, but this was new to him. “That’s a new concept for me, okay? It’s scary. The point I’m trying to make is, if I say no and insist on paying, I know there will be a part of you and our relationship I’ll never see. I will do the scary thing to learn about you and us,” he finished, saying it as clearly as he could. “I don’t want to know your fantasies to spice up the sex life. What we have is great, and if this was it for years to come, I’d consider myself the luckiest guy on the planet. But, it’s not just sex. It’s about you, and getting to know you. And if you need time to trust me, that’s fine—” 

“Sometimes, after fucking you,” Steve announced without preamble, and Tony shut up immediately to listen with every cell in his body. “After pulling out, I, uh. I, I have the urge to take you between my hands and stretch you. See what I’ve done to you, to, to see how much you can take. I can’t believe it, sometimes I think, that maybe I’m, I don’t think I would be strong enough, I don’t know how you can take it. You blow my mind, Tony, but I still… I still have this urge to see how much you can take.” 

Tony swallowed, hard. 

“Okay, that, so fucking—no,” Tony suddenly changed his mind, and grabbed one of Steve’s hands and pressed it against his half-hard cock. “0 to 80 in four seconds,” he growled playfully, then laughed at the color rising in Steve’s face. But in difference to Tony, who still enjoyed at minimum two layers of clothing from the neck down, Steve was stark naked. Tony didn’t need to be a psychic to know Steve was at least as excited as he was embarrassed. 

“Why don’t I get a little more _comfortable_ ,” Tony murmured, and if Steve wasn’t excited before, he was now. After all, comfortable for their preferred night-time activities was about more than just getting undressed. “Thirty minutes, tops. Why don’t you see if anything catches your eye in the toys?”

Despite the obvious interest pressing against Tony’s inner thigh and the blush coloring Steve’s cheeks, Steve still had the gall to smirk up at Tony like he held all the cards. “Oh, wow… you’ll let me play with your treasure chest?”

“No, baby, it’s better than that,” Tony purred. “I’m going to let you play with me.”


	12. Day 11-13: Object insertion (part 2/2), Licking, Rimming, Creampie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: NSFW image included near end of chapter.

Tony’s private hoard of toys - affectionately called his treasure chest - was his pride and joy. He began his dutiful hunt for the best that money could buy in his mid-teens, and by now he had curated a cache boasting enough variety and exclusive collectibles to make Gillian Anderson blush. 

Still, when he returned to the bedroom, clean and _clean_ , Steve had only laid out one toy. Tony tried not to look disappointed, but the damn thing wasn’t even particularly intimidating, it was a run of the mill beaded glass dildo with a gentle curve in the shaft. 

“Found a favorite?” Tony said with a grin, hoping it would sound more playful than surprised. For reasons he couldn’t explain, he gravitated to Steve’s side. Steve opened his arms to help reel him in until Tony’s was happily nuzzling into his shoulder. His voice was partially muffled against Steve’s arm as he confessed, “I expected a line-up, Steve. Didn’t even want a plug?”

“This is good,” Steve simply said, rubbing slow, gentle circles over Tony’s back as he held him close and pressed a kiss into his hair. Besides their nudity, they hadn’t started anything approaching sex yet, but somehow Tony needed and greedily indulged in Steve’s comfort. 

“There is one more toy, if we get to it tonight,” Steve told him in an absent whisper. “There’s no rush, sweetheart. I’m in no rush.”

“Speak for yourself,” Tony petulantly mumbled into Steve’s shoulder without leaning away from his cozy cuddle. “I’ve got a hot as fuck boyfriend who wants to have kinky sex with me and now I have to wait—”

Steve hauled him off his feet and bodily threw Tony over his hip. WIth a shriek of gleeful surprise, Tony landed on his back, bouncing and laughing and reaching for Steve impatiently, and Steve wasted no time stalking after him on his hands and knees. Whispers of laughter still slipped past his lips as Tony pressed up to kiss Steve senseless, and the moment he could, Tony wrapped his legs and arms around Steve’s body to urge him down, eager as he was to feel the pressure of Steve’s mass weighing him into the mattress. 

But despite Tony attempts to goad Steve on, to urge him closer or to deepen their kiss, Steve only pinned him down, keeping Tony from seeking his pleasure by rolling or grinding his hips against Steve. Tony grunted and sighed until finally submitting to Steve’s lead and melting back into the mattress. Steve smirked as he mouthed at Tony’s pouting lips, until finally he coaxed a reluctant smile from Tony. Soon, Tony’s meager resistance withered away, and he wetted and parted his lips under Steve’s beseeching little kisses. Steve wasted no time deepening their kiss and sweeping his tongue over Tony’s to taste him again. Their kiss was endless and unhurried, until Steve briefly pulled away to find the lube he’d left nearby. 

The interruption left Tony breathless and mildly dazed. He leaned up on one elbow to see what Steve moved away to do. This wasn’t the first time they had laid together in bed for long stretches of time, kissing each other breathless while their hands roamed, familiar and all the more eager for it. Still, Tony suspected he’d never tire of watching Steve getting ready to prepare him, from the care he insisted on taking with every step, to the look of concentration in his eyes. The movement of the copious lube between Steve’s long, strong fingers was absolutely hypnotic, and Tony was so nearly swept away staring at his fingers that the first touch of Steve’s hand left him gasping for breath in surprise.

With soft murmurs of praise and affection, Steve cupped Tony’s half-hard cock and gave it cursory squeeze, and with a sigh of anticipation, Tony parted his legs and angled his hips up in a silent bid for Steve’s attention. And Steve never denied him anything. 

Steve poured more lube onto his fingers and his fingers into Tony with an infuriating patience. Had it been any other man, Tony would have smacked him with a pillow and turned formation, but the longer Steve took to prepare him, the rougher he tended to be, so Tony gritted his teeth, held his tongue, and did his best to relax as Steve pumped his fingers slowly into Tony, thoroughly spreading the warmed lube as deep inside Tony’s body as his long fingers could reach. 

Those wicked fingers were all too familiar with Tony’s most guarded secrets. Steve only pressed chaste, reassuring kisses to Tony’s chest as he worked three thick fingers into him, dutifully steering away from Tony’s spot and minimizing distractions to let Tony indulge in the gradual stretch—the initial resistance, the blunt, burgeoning pleasure, and the inevitable _give_ as his body accepted the full girth of intrusion. As Tony’s body finally relaxed around his fingers and tried to drew him deeper into his body with every thrust, Steve occasionally curled his fingers to tease Tony’s prostate with a light touch that left Tony gasping for air and cursing Steve with increasingly senseless expletives. 

Taking his words as the primal compliments they were, Steve shamelessly preened over his minor victory of reducing Tony to a state of incoherence. Almost unnoticed at first, Steve slid his fingers over Tony’s spot more boldly, more consistently, and before Tony knew what had happened, Steve’s firm massage of his prostate sent shivers down Tony’s spine and his head rolling back with pleasure. 

Tony blinked wildly as he tried to pull himself together. He felt like he had missed an important step somewhere between Steve’s slow, indulgent build-up to work him open and the sudden consuming pleasure that reduced Tony to a dribbling, mewling mess. His body bowed on instinct, arching as far as Steve’s mass allowed as he begged with his body and his words for Steve to let him come. Instead, Steve lifted him by his hips until Tony was doubled over in plow position with his heavy cock hanging mere inches over his face, and his ass turned up for Steve and Steve alone. 

Steve pressed his thumbs into Tony’s ass to stretched his fingered hole wider still. After the recent concentrated baiting of a prostate orgasm he’d been denied, Tony still saw the world through a haze of impatience and lust, but none of it seemed to matter to Steve. Tony held his breath and watched the uncharacteristic, single-minded hunger in Steve’s eyes—not for Tony, as it almost always was, or for Steve’s own pleasure, but for Tony’s ass. 

“Three fingers and you’re still so tight,” Steve groaned in his awe, changing his grip to pull Tony’s hole open by his middle and fore- fingers. Tony could only bite down on his fist to muffle his grunts of pain, silencing himself to let Steve look his fill, but somehow Steve noticed. He slackened his grip immediately and asked how Tony was, promising he’d be more careful. Before Tony could assure Steve that he was fine, that the pain was a good pain, Steve slipped his hands down to cup and squeeze the meat of Tony’s ass, gently spreading him open for a less invasive treat. 

Tony half expected Steve’s lips or his tongue. He hadn’t expected Steve’s _teeth_. His body arched away with a sudden jolt, but Steve kept him where he was with his hips angled up and his cheeks spread. He grazed his teeth across Tony’s skin, biting and sucking at his tender, puckered hole until a mixture of Steve’s spit and lube tickled down Tony’s back. Whatever it was Steve wanted - to minimize the mess (unlikely), to keep Tony’s ass as wet as possible (undoubtedly), or just to drive Tony out of his mind (absolutely) - Steve pressed Tony further into his position, pushed his legs further apart, and dove into Tony’s bared crack to lap up the lube and spit he was single-handedly responsible for. 

Tony had tried to be quiet, to tangle his hands into the bed sheets instead of clawing at Steve’s back, to bite down on the deep moans of satisfaction Steve’s wrung out of him, anything that might interrupt what Steve had planned for him, but it was so easy to forget that Steve read his body like it was his native language. With a knowing smirk and a mischievous wink, Steve pulled away for a third time, leaving Tony on the verge of release, almost sobbing in his frustration. Lube, lube, and more lube - Steve poured it all out over his fingers and rubbed it warm in one hand while Tony could measured the pros and cons of trying to suck his own dick again. 

“Think you’re ready for the toy, sweetheart?” Steve growled under his breath, and despite his cock’s eager twitch of interest, Tony glared up at him. 

“You don’t fuck me in the next ten seconds,” Tony hissed, mildly breathless from the pressure of his position weighing on his torso, “so help me god, Steve, I will smack you with every dildo under the—” 

At first it looked as if Steve would sit there and giggle at Tony’s indignant rage-lust, but with a quick sleight of hand, he held up the beaded glass dildo. Tony abruptly stopped his threats to watch Steve slide the toy through his fist in an obscene, lube-slicked pantomime of what Steve had planned for him. 

Slowly, ever so carefully, Steve pressed the fattest bead against Tony’s hole. Tony whined, strained and breathless, as his body stretched to accommodate a girth of two and a half inches. When he dared to open his eyes, the first thing he saw was the spellbound expression on Steve’s face as he watched the toy sink deeper into Tony’s body with minimal resistance. He pulled the toy out slowly, clearly wanting Tony to feel the burning sting of discomfort of every glass bead more than once. 

When he started thrusting it in earnest, the rippling sensation of pleasure and pain left Tony breathless and unable to form any word besides Steve’s name to beg and plead for release. Immediately, Steve wrapped his free hand around the base of Tony’s cock with enough force to stave off his climax. Hoarse from his desperate and near-delirious need to find release, Tony cried out with a sob, but Steve didn’t seem to care as he pulled the toy out. 

Without preamble, Steve got into position, lined himself up, and pushed his hard cock into the stretched hole left by the toy. The excessive lube he had fucked into Tony’s ass was enough to ease the way, but he hadn’t slicked himself up or used a lubricated condom, and the friction left Tony hissing through his teeth with mild discomfort. The pain took some of the edge off, and every shallow thrust helped spread the lube over the full length of Steve’s cock until his every movement left Tony moaning with satisfaction. 

“Steve, Steve, Steve, please,” Tony whined breathlessly, “ _please_ , need it, Steve—”

Steve responded with a deep, predatory growl. “Think you’re ready, Tony? Ready to take it?”

Tony mewled helplessly, when in one continuous motion, Steve pulled out, flipped Tony onto his belly, and fucked into him again. They weren’t the shallow rolls of Steve’s hips from before, but slow, full-length thrusts that bled the tension from Tony’s muscles and warmed his body with the promise of euphoria that Tony almost didn’t feel the smooth, blunt object pressing against the stretched rim of his ass where it strained to accommodate the girth of Steve’s thick cock. 

“Steve?” Tony choked out, either confused or concerned until the first bead from the tapered side of the glass dildo popped past the firm resistance of Tony’s rim beside Steve’s hard cock. 

Steve forced the rest of the dildo into him, one bead after another, and despite the grip Steve had of his cock, Tony’s orgasm tore through him once Steve started fucking him in earnest in tandem with the beaded dildo. 

Distantly, Tony felt how Steve continued fucking him for minutes, days, weeks, but his body had given up responding. His spent cock twitched insistently with the overwhelming and shocking pleasure he’d never known before, streaking the sheets with come long after he should have stopped. 

He felt Steve’s rhythm slip into a desperate rut until he buried himself deep inside Tony’s body. The come filling him, the wet alien feeling that was still so new and so _exclusively_ Steve, and before he knew it or had the chance to prepare, Steve eased the dildo out of him and slowly pulled out. 

Steve guided his ass up, and boneless as he was, Tony whimpered and complied. 

“So, so… so fucking… _perfect_ ,” Steve said with slurring, uncoordinated words through his post-orgasmic haze. Tony could feel the gust of his breath against the raw, tender skin of his ass. With increasingly bold grips and strength, Steve spread open Tony’s ass cheeks and then his hole, marveling at his own handiwork. 

So soon after his fucking, Tony's ass gaped without being touched, but Steve wanted more. With a consciously gentler touch than before, Steve pulled Tony’s hole to its limit. He didn't say much, or if he did, Tony couldn't understand him. He simply watched. Watched the unnatural stretch of Tony's fucked out hole, watched his come filling Tony's body. Watched as some of it leaked out of Tony and slowly slid downward, tickling his skin and raising gooseflesh. 

  
_Fan art commission by the talented[negativesd09](https://negativesd09.tumblr.com)_

Tony thought he heard Steve rasp something along the lines of, 'too much?', but before Tony could care to ask, Steve licked it off with the flat of his tongue. Tony couldn't have moved a muscle if he'd wanted to, but the way Steve couldn't stop touching him, couldn't stop staring at him made him feel inexplicably appreciated. This was something Steve had dreamed of doing, a fantasy he had never dared to think would come true, and making it a reality was all Tony had wanted to do. So when Steve could only grope his ass and expose Tony for his own pleasure, another fantasy successfully brought to life, Tony felt Steve’s gratitude and his adoration deep down to his bones. 

But it was the way Steve couldn't get enough of him, and how he couldn't stop growling 'mine' softly under his breath in equal measures of disbelief and incredulity that left Tony determined to learn what other fantasies Steve had always been too afraid to try.


	13. Day 14: Tentacles

CERN had invited Tony to visit as part of a handful of engineers and physicists they wanted to wine and dine for future collaborations. While it was a genuine honor to be recognized as a leader in his field already, Tony was the only one in the group who hadn’t been driving when the Jackson 5 were still a thing. 

The most challenging part of his excursion was to convince Steve to join him. He had initially balked at the idea - flying with a private jet to Geneva, staying in a suite for well over five thousand a night, and then running away to some resort in the alps was too far out of Steve’s financial comfort zone. Tony finally had to reframe his question and tell Steve how uncomfortable these situations made him. Sure, he could put on a show better than anyone, but that didn’t mean the performance came easily. It was exhausting and isolating, and if Tony could come back to Steve at the end of the day, Steve would help him in ways money never could. 

So while Tony lived out one of his dreams in the bowels of CERN’s hadron collider, Steve wandered the streets of Geneva, occupying himself easily in art galleries and hikes around city. As averse to the trip as Steve had been initially, he really seemed to know how to fill his time. Even the language didn’t get in his way. Of course Tony knew Steve studied French, but he nearly squirmed out of his seat with excitement on their first dinner out when Steve effortlessly spoke to their waiter in French. 

While Tony was thrilled to be at CERN, little made him happier than the random pictures Steve would send him from his daily adventures. Every time Tony’s phone buzzed with an incoming message his skin would tingle in anticipation. Sometimes Steve sent him photos of a small painting in progress from the mountain side, other times a selfie with a friendly cow he met on one of his hikes. Once it was a group photo with a small gaggle of school children who started following him around a museum with questions about art, architecture, and America. 

“You hardly got to see the city,” Steve noted on their last evening in the city. They had enjoyed a long dinner and decided to take a stroll around the city. It was drizzling and the streets were fairly empty, but neither of them were in a hurry to get back to the hotel. They walked arm in arm, squeezed together under a big umbrella. 

Tony grinned up at Steve’s regretful tone and brought Steve’s hand up to brush a quick kiss across his cold fingers. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Steve. I did everything I wanted: four days with the hadron collider at CERN, and four nights with the hardon collider at—”

“—Tony!” 

“—the hotel, what?” he asked in a charade of innocence, batting his eyelashes up at Steve to fan the flames of exasperated laughter that Steve was trying (and failing) to keep to himself. As if Tony wasn’t leaning in so close that he could feel the tremors of amusement against his side, or recognize the shameless affection in Steve’s eyes. 

“What I’m saying is that we can stay longer if you want to see the city,” Steve clarified with a long-suffering tone, “we don’t need to rush to Lucerne.”

Tony pursed his lips and thought it over. This was Steve’s first trip out of the country, and while he knew that Steve would only ever be happy for him, the last thing Tony wanted to do was rub his privilege in Steve’s face. 

“Cities are cities,” he eventually said. “Geneva’s beautiful, but I’ve never seen mountains like these. We don’t have alps back home.”

Steve expression warmed with in his surprised delight, the way he always did when he realized he and Tony would be sharing a new experience together. He pressed his lips to Tony’s temple and breathed in the scent of his hair deeply before straightening again. 

“Tell me about where we’re going?” Steve asked after a little while. Tony blinked up at him, unsure if he’d heard right. Steve hadn’t expressed much excitement over the more extravagant leg of their trip, and to hear him curious about it eased a knot of tension Tony that had been carrying with him since Steve first turned down the trip. 

“We’re staying on a mountain overlooking the lake,” Tony started to explain, doing his best to contain his giddy relief to see Steve was warming up to their holiday. The night only got darker and the rain persisted, but they continued strolling through the streets, arm in arm, while Steve listened to Tony paint the picture of the little alpine paradise they were about to discover together. 

*** 

“I’m looking at it, but I still can’t believe it’s real.”

Tony glanced away from the menu to watch Steve. Tony had picked the restaurant, something well recommended that they could enjoy in town before taking a cab to the hotel. The restaurant staff had been kind enough to open the French doors to the balcony on the second floor so Tony and Steve could have a clear view of the river and the town without sitting on the patio. Although foot traffic along the patio was minimal, Tony would rather pay to avoid sitting where anyone could walk up to them or take their picture. 

“You were fucking me five hours ago, how much more real—” 

Steve cracked the laminated menu across Tony’s head before he had a chance to finish. Tony jumped with a yelp, then immediately ducked his head so Steve wouldn’t see him giggling like a schoolboy.

“Don’t be a smartass,” Steve tried to say without grinning, not that he ever could. Tony preened at the compliment and put his own menu aside to give Steve his attention. Recalling what Steve had just said, Tony settled his chin in his palm to comfortably take in the beautiful view. 

“And stop staring at me,” Steve drawled even as he watched Tony with such adoration, as if nothing else mattered. “I feel like we’re inside of a Disney movie. Belle’s gonna come around the corner singing about the price of eggs any second.”

“We might as well go looking for her,” Tony replied, and Steve’s smile burgeoned into a soft laugh that left Tony’s heart doing silly things. He could feel his cheeks warming so he quickly turned his attention away. His phone was the first thing Tony saw, so he picked it up and pretended he needed to look at the map. 

“She said something about a baker, right? They’ve got great bakeries here.”

“And Greek food, apparently,” Steve said more dubiously, turning his menu over to double check the cuisine for the fourth time in the past ten minutes. 

“One of the CERN administrators recommended it,” Tony told him, and Steve’s mischievous side-eye became curious again. “She’s from Greece originally and she said she comes here when she’s homesick. Then I couldn’t stop thinking about moussaka, so you’ll just have to suffer, because I’m craving Greek.”

“Just because it’s unexpected doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy it. I’ve never had Greek food,” Steve pointed out with a smile. “Order whatever you think I’ll like.”

Tony blinked at him, blindsided but determined to keep his comments to himself. _Never had Greek food?_

Steve read his expression like a book, and with a roll of his eyes, he said, “Don’t give me that look, Tony. If I’ve had anything other than gyros and baklava, I’ve forgotten it.” 

Before Tony could respond, the waitress came around to their table to take their order. Tony ordered a little of everything, heavy on the cheese. There was no point coming to Switzerland if they didn’t indulge in dairy and chocolate, and on Steve’s first trip? Not on Tony’s watch. 

Hell, they were in Switzerland - he should get Steve a good watch as a souvenir. 

“The city’s small and concentrated, and the hotel can send the car as late as seven tonight,” Tony said as he resumed their earlier conversation and turned his phone around so Steve could see the map. 

Steve wanted to see the Sleeping Lion and the old church, and apart from that he was happy to eat anything and walk anywhere. Tony wanted to eat his weight in fresh chocolate - the good shit, where the expiration date was measured by hours, not weeks. They sketched out a loose plan for the rest of their day in the city, and Tony had started furtively comparing the Vacheron Constantin catalogs in Lucerne and Geneva when the food arrived. 

With the help of other staff, their waitress filled their table with feta baked in crunchy phyllo pastries, fried zucchini and cheese patties, dolmades with spiced rice and sultanas, stuffed peppers with beef, vegetables, and feta, and a salad of grilled eggplants with a balsamic glaze. The moussaka was fresh out of the oven, the chicken stew brimmed with olives, tomatoes, and cauliflower and filled the air with scents of cinnamon and garlic. 

But it was the octopus that caught Steve’s attention. 

“We don’t have to finish it,” Tony reminded him mildly, not sure what to make of Steve’s pinched look of concern. When Steve didn’t acknowledge his comment, Tony leaned in and softly said, “Steve?”

“Are those, uh,” Steve cleared his throat before trying again. “Are those the suction cups?”

“You don’t like octopus?” Tony asked tactfully as he could, and picked up one of the curled up cooked tentacles with his fork to try. It was chewier maybe than what Steve was used to, but the octopus was fresh and the flavor of the herbs and wine came through without the fishy stink. 

“Try it, it’s good. Chewy,” Tony remembered to warn him. “Maybe just the tip? There’s more flavor there—what?” he stopped talking as Steve spluttered through a burst of laughter. Steve couldn’t yet speak coherently when Tony’s words caught up to him. 

Tony dropped back in his seat and hid his face behind his hands. He couldn’t laugh. One of them had to be the adult here, damnit. 

“Who’s the smartass now?” Tony grumbled as well as he could with a blush he could _feel_. “Just for that, you’re eating one whole tentacle.”

“I hate to break it to you, sweetheart,” Steve teased back, still snickering to himself. But whatever he thought of the octopus tentacles, he did what Tony told him to do; he even picked the biggest one off the plate. “Guess you had to find out some day. I’m afraid you’re in love with a smartass. It’s terminal, no cure.”

“Loving you is terminal?” Tony echoed with a feigned, dramatic wonder that left Steve rolling his eyes and grinning like an idiot. “Damn, but what a way to go.”


	14. Day 15: Uniform

Tony frowned at the traitorous white shirt in his hands. He’d only wanted to get one kiss—one simple kiss—while Steve tried it on earlier in the week, and the damn thing had the audacity to _wrinkle_. 

From the closet, Steve didn’t sound any more pleased. “I feel like I should be sadder.”

“You didn’t know him, babe,” Tony assured him, turning the shirt over in his hands to see if maybe there was a way to wear the fucker inside out instead. “Hey, uh. Babe? How important is a shirt?”

Silence answered him from the closet. Steve took one step out and stared across his dorm room at him, stone faced. “What.”

Tony instinctively placed the shirt back on the bed and put his hands behind his back. If only he’d kept his hands to himself at the fitting. 

Steve marched out in nothing but his dress pants, his undershirt, and a frown of agitation. “What’s wrong?”

“It, uh. It’s wrinkled,” Tony mumbled, his voice unusually quiet. Steve must have noticed something was off, because he forgot the shirt and took a step closer to Tony instead. 

“And you think I’m upset? We can fix this,” Steve said softly. When Tony looked up, Steve was smiling back at him. “I’ll iron it, what’s—this won’t take two minutes.”

In two months, Tony would walk. In two months, Tony would take his robots and his degree and return to R&D at Stark Industries. 

The next time that shirt needed ironing, Tony wouldn’t be the one who wrinkled it. 

“Sweetheart?” Steve whispered, cupping Tony’s cheek to gently encourage him to meet Steve’s eyes. “Sweetheart, look at me. I couldn’t care less about the shirt. Is something going on with your committee?” Steve guessed suddenly, frowning at the possibility. “What hoops are they making you—”

“School’s fine,” Tony promised Steve in a rush, and it was so easy to lean into Steve’s tender hand, to reach for him and hide from choices he didn’t want to make in Steve’s strong arms. “School’s fine, Steve. Long night, that’s all,” he lied while Steve couldn’t see his face. “I don’t know how to iron a stupid shirt.”

“That’s why there’s two of us,” Steve teased, whispering the words into Tony’s hair before pressing a kiss to Tony’s temple. “You’re the genius, and I’m the iron man.”

Tony snorted quietly at the dumb joke and smacked Steve on the arm, though he was still too comfortable and comforted in Steve’s arms to move away. “Jokes like that will be the reason why I’ll be asleep when you get back tonight.”

“You can either stay awake, or I can wake you when I get in, but we’re having a talk when I come back,” Steve told him. He still spoke quietly, but the teasing edge was gone, and there was no doubt in Tony’s mind that he meant it. 

“Something’s bothering you, Tony. We need to talk about it,” Steve continued, straightening so he could look Tony in the eyes. It hurt to see Steve’s concern, because Tony knew Steve genuinely wanted to work things out. Steve wasn’t the kind of man to give up on him—to give up on _them_ —and Tony didn’t have the spine to walk away. 

It hurt to see the determination in Steve’s kind, loving eyes and know there was nothing either of them could do. 

“We’re okay, babe,” Tony promised, absently rubbing Steve’s back in an instinctive effort to comfort him. “But if you want to talk, we’ll talk.”

“Good, then that’s settled,” Steve decided with a relieved smile. He pressed another kiss to Tony’s hair before stepping away, taking the shirt with him as he walked back into his closet to dig out the ironing board. 

Tony watched him fix the shirt and get dressed. He smoothed out Steve’s lapels and tied his tie. He kissed him goodbye and watched him walk away. 

He returned to Steve’s bed, and laid his head down on Steve’s pillow. It occured to Tony that soon Steve’s smell would only be a distant memory. Sleep abandoned him, and instead Tony hugged the pillow more closely, determined to indulge in every moment they had left. 

*** 

Tony grunted quietly as consciousness returned to him. Someone was shaking his shoulder. “Tony? Sweetheart, I’m back.”

Slowly, Tony rolled to the side enough so he could see Steve. He hadn’t turned the lights on or pulled the curtains aside to let the sunlight in, but there was still enough light in the room for him to see Steve looking like a dream in his dress blues.

“You’re so hot,” Tony moaned in his sleepy-heavy voice. A faint blush rose in Steve’s cheeks, and he ducked his head before Tony caught his bashful smile. “Steeeeeeve,” he whined, reaching for Steve’s carefully styled hair and giving it an impatient tug. “You know you’re hot… fuck, you’re so hot, and this uniform… god, you should’ve waked me up by fucking me in your uniform.”

Steve opened and closed his mouth, but no sound came out. He cleared his throat, but there was still a little tremor in his voice that told Tony he was on to something. “You can’t consent if you’re asleep,” Steve said, but somehow his statement of fact sounded an awful lot like a question. 

“Seven months, Steve,” Tony reminded him, rolling onto his back. Steve followed his motion without thinking, slotting in between Tony’s thighs and settling on top of him like he had never left. Tony grinned up at him in his mischief, bringing his legs up to gently squeeze Steve’s sides between his thighs. 

Steve rolled his hips forward and Tony groaned under his breath, arching his hips eagerly. “Oh, Steve,” he moaned, “is that a belt buckle I feel, or are you happy to see me?”

“Can’t it be both?” Steve wondered innocently. His words caught Tony off guard, and his moan fizzled out with a sudden laugh. Above him, Tony could feel Steve laughing softly with him, and he reached for him blindly, dragging him down for a kiss. 

When they reluctantly slipped apart for breath, Tony licked his lips and glanced at the clock on the wall. “Patrick?” he wondered, and Steve shook his head. 

“Baseball. Until eight,” he promised. 

“Go turn on the lights and come back to me,” Tony told him, giving him a gentle shove in his shoulder. “Fuck me with your uniform on, soldier.”

Steve blinked down at him, so conflicted Tony almost felt bad about his demands. “But, Tony,” Steve whispered, concentrating so hard Tony could practically feel him willing his erection away for a sobering conversation. “We need to talk. I’m worried about you.”

“Nobody cares more about me than you,” Tony promised him, “not even me. We’ve been sleeping together from the start, we haven’t used condoms in months. You think I worry you’d mistreat me in my sleep?” he asked in a deliberate misunderstanding he hoped would be enough to derail Steve’s concern. “You know how hot that makes me? The thought of waking up to you fingering me? Fucking me? Using my mouth?”

What was Steve and what was Steve’s belt buckle was increasingly obvious, and Tony reached down between them to cup and squeeze Steve’s erection through his dress pants. 

“Tony, wait, stop—” Steve gasped, but the way his hips thrust into Tony’s palm made it clear what his body wanted. His downstairs brain had clearly taken over the reins. 

“Turn on the lights, Steve,” Tony repeated in a commanding tone that had Steve biting his lip. “You come back here and fuck me, do whatever you want with me. Fill me with your come. But whatever you do,” he growled, pausing to be sure Steve was hanging on his every word. “Tonight, you keep your uniform on.”


	15. Day 16: Body worship

Bucky crossed his arms and scowled at the news. “What the hell, Steve? Second Friday of the month is Zumba and pastrami night. You got somewhere more important to be?”

As if Steve didn’t already feel like shit for cancelling on his friends. Sam spoke before Steve had a chance to defend his decision. 

“Sharon worked on the new routine, man,” he said quietly. It was almost worse that he wasn’t raising his voice or getting angry about it; Steve couldn’t bear the disappointment. “She needs our help two hours a month to practice something new, and you bail? You can’t do two hours.”

“And pastrami,” Bucky intoned, clearly not about to let the food portion of their tradition go forgotten. “I saved my cheat day for this. What’s so important you have to cancel?” 

Steve was going to be one of _those people_ , he thought miserably. One of _those_ who interpreted every twitch or every action to signal the worst, horrible, no-good things. Sure, they were his best friends, but they would never let him live this day down. 

“It’s Tony,” Steve said quietly, looking at a particularly captivating crack in the pavement he wish he could fall into. “He… uh, he’s been stressed out. I think. He’s not really answering texts, or phone calls. I don’t know wh—”

“Say no more,” Sam said in a clipped tone, and there it was. The proverbial kick in the teeth. He should have just braced for it, let them rip into him and move on, but Steve held up his phone to show them he had absolutely no messages waiting on his lock screen. 

Before he even had the chance to click it on so his friends could see what was going on, Bucky was texting someone and Sam had his phone to his ear, waiting on someone to answer. 

To Steve’s surprise, Bucky looked up and told them, “Rescheduled. Told her it’s a bromergency.”

“What?” Steve mumbled, but his immediate follow-up was to grab the phone out of Sam’s hands to cancel his call. “This is _not_ a Superbro Caucus problem!”

“He’s either cheating or dumping you,” Sam replied, his tone gentle but firm. Clearly, he was a practitioner of ripping off the Band-aid in one jerk instead of washing it off with lukewarm water and a gentle touch. 

“Sam’s right. We’ll need boots on the ground to rule out cheating, and I’m too hungry to run around Boston alone.”

“He’s not cheating! I know where he fucking is!” Steve snapped. Sam and Bucky stared back at him, and it took a second too long to realize he’d shouted at his friends. He didn’t raise his voice, not with friends. 

“What’s he done to you?” Bucky muttered with a borderline homicidal concern, and on Steve’s right, Sam was just shaking his head with a frown. 

“Man, you should’ve said something sooner,” Sam said with a doleful pity. “He’s got you believing his lies—”

“He’s in his lab! He practically lives there,” Steve told them, desperate to be believed. 

“Are you sure about that?” Bucky asked before Steve could continue. 

“Dummy’s probably just what he calls you for believing him,” Sam pointed out, and Bucky was nodding in agreement immediately. Steve could only stare at them. 

“What’s—what are you talking about? You know Tony,” he whispered in disbelief. “You _like_ Tony. Tony wouldn’t lie like that.”

“Sure, Tony’s great. He picks up the tab,” Bucky promised half-heartedly. Without thinking, Steve glared at his friend for even suggesting that was all Tony was good for. Bucky rolled his eyes, but he conceded his mistake. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Well, one way or another that man is lying, and I don’t care what a liar pays for,” Sam raised his voice to say to both of them. Steve had never more been tempted to throw his friends into the fucking river. It wasn’t even a temptation, it was an _instinct_. 

“I, alone, am going to go to his lab and talk to him,” Steve said as calmly as he could. Except, his friends weren’t going to let him get away with it. 

“And you’ll report back,” Sam finished for him. 

Bucky seconded Sam’s decision. “We’ll be at the deli if you need us.”

*** 

The workshop dark and abandoned on a Friday night, except for the section allocated to Tony. Steve could see the light on in the distance, and he could hear the soft, intermittent chirps Dum-E made whenever Tony ran through Dum-E’s protocols. 

Carefully, Steve picked his way through the workshop in the dark until he stood in the open doorway to Tony’s lab. It was the biggest space in the workshop with a door and a lock. Tony had several work benches in his lab, each of which had been dedicated to some unidentifiable step in the robot and AI developing process with which Steve was only conversationally acquainted. On one of the first occasions Tony had showed Steve his lab and introduced him to Dum-E, Steve had realized that standing in the workshop and trying to make sense of the organized chaos was a window into Tony’s mind. The idea should have been cool at best, or overwhelming, but instead it somehow made Steve feel deeply attached to the discarded scraps of metal and homemade tools that cluttered Tony’s lab on a daily basis. 

Steve might never understand what was going on, but he could see the care and attention that Tony put into his work—he knew where everything was, and even what the once-discarded scraps could be employed to do. Nothing was a waste, nothing was useless in Tony’s hands, and if Steve didn’t love him already he’d been a lost cause. 

On the far side of the lab, Tony was hunched at his desk. Clearly, he was in software mode. Steve continued to move in the nearly-dark, not wanting to scare the life out of Tony with a sudden flare in the dark, but the closer he got, the more he wondered how he’d announce himself. Wasn’t this how murderers approached their victims, creeping in the shadows? 

A whisper of wheels and gentle beeps approached Steve from behind, and he turned in time to see Dum-E barreling down at him, top-speed. The robot twirled around him in a blatant display of delight, chirping loudly with every spin. 

Tony grunted from his desk, clearly in the middle of something, but he still humored his little robot. “What do you mean, buddy? You miss Steve?”

Maybe Steve shouldn’t have been so touched that a machine missed him (hell, maybe he should have been creeped out?), but he gently rubbed Dum-E’s arm in greeting. “I’m happy to see you, too,” he said quietly. The whisper of a human voice caught Tony’s attention, and he sat up in his confusion. 

Steve smiled at him as if he wasn’t scared. As if he wasn’t worried. As if Bucky and Sam’s words weren’t still echoing in his thoughts. 

“Hi, Tony,” he said quietly, and with a final pat to Dum-E’s claw, he made his way to Tony’s desk. 

“Hey, babe,” Tony said after a beat, still processing what he was seeing. “What, uh. What’re you doing here?”

“What am I doing here?” Steve repeated, pausing only long enough to remind himself that Tony was under a lot of stress and he had not come to the lab to add to Tony’s stress. “Sweetheart, I haven’t heard from you in two days. You’re not answering my texts, that’s not like you. I was worried.”

Tony blinked at him, then turned in his seat to look at the date. “... fucking shit—it’s Friday?” he breathed, then immediately turned back to Steve, wide-eyed in his regret. “Steve, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—”

Steve shook his head, and Tony quieted immediately. He looked so shamefaced and wrung out that Steve worried he’d cry any second. Steve closed the space between them in two quick steps and reached to comb his fingers through Tony’s hair. The soft, gentle waves of his hair were too weighed down with grease and grime from the lab to slide through Steve’s fingers like they always would, and Steve’s heart broke at the thought of how badly Tony had misjudged time. 

“Are you at a good stopping point?” Steve asked, and even though Tony’s shoulder twitched at the question, he nodded in the affirmative. “If it’s not, you can finish.”

Again, Tony nodded. “Been working on, um. This bug. Since… Wednesday, I guess.”

“Maybe sleep would help?” Steve asked without a hint of irony, and again, Tony nodded. “Okay, good, that’s good. I’ll help you lock up, sweetheart. Let’s get you home.”

*** 

They said goodbye to Dum-E, shut down the lab, and made it back to Tony’s dorm room within the hour. Tony’s energy was fading fast, and Steve helped Tony to desk. He left Tony sitting there for a few minutes while he filled up the tub and dug through Tony’s closet for clean linens. With all the practice of growing up with a nurse for a mother, Steve managed to pull the bedsheets off Tony’s bed and get fresh sheets down before the water levels became dangerously high. 

“Sorry, Steve,” Tony was mumbling mindlessly as Steve helped him undress. It almost sounded like he was crying. “So, sorry… didn’t mean to hurt you, I love you, Steve.”

“I know. I love you, too,” Steve promised him, and when he finally got Tony out of his clothes, he gently lifted Tony into his arms and carried him to the bathroom. He waited for Tony to toe at the water himself without sounding like he’d been scalded to lower Tony into the tub. 

Steve put Tony’s clothes away in the hamper and tried to pick up around the room a little while before returning to the bathroom to join Tony in the tub. He undressed quickly, then carefully urged Tony to sit up and lean forward so he could slide in behind him. The water threatened to overflow, and Steve was careful not to make any sudden movements as he bundled Tony up in his arms and nuzzled into greasy hair. 

Tony must have drifted off at some point. He rolled over in Steve’s arms until they were chest to chest, and Tony could rest his head comfortably on Steve’s shoulder to rest. “Is this a dream?” he mumbled in a whisper, his voice so quiet Steve wasn’t even sure Tony was speaking to him. “You stay with me?”

“I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart,” Steve promised him, rubbing his hands up and down Tony’s back gently in the warm water, doing his best to offer him comfort after such long days. Tony’s frame was thinner than usual, and something ugly twisted in Steve’s gut at the thought. If Tony had missed days worth of time, when was the last time he ate? Had he been hunched over his desk or his benches all that time without taking care of himself? 

Steve could see through the water where the small bruises over Tony’s hips and thighs had nearly faded away. As archaic and covetous it made him feel, seeing the bruises he left on Tony’s body stirred Steve’s emotions unlike anything else. He could - and had - spent hours cherishing them, softly kissing them better or reviving them with greedy enthusiasm. Tony’s hips mapped Steve’s desire in the firm, unwavering grip of his hands anytime he fucked Tony from behind. The soft flesh of Tony’s inner thighs, the firm, supple curve of his ass, Steve could spend every morning tasting his skin and raising bruises with his teeth and his lips where Tony’s body was most delicate and responsive. 

For months, their time together had been clear and unmistakable memories in Tony’s skin. Until now, Steve had never seen them so faded, so nearly abandoned. He willed his hands not to shake as he brushed his fingertips over the marks of what must have been his thumbs digging into Tony’s lower back as Steve had pinned him down for a fuck. It was the most noticeable mark left, but it was so faint it might be lost by morning. 

Steve kept his thoughts to himself, and instead tried to focus on Tony in the moment. With the advantage of the warm water around them to help Tony’s body relax, Steve smoothed his hands down Tony’s back more firmly, rubbing gentle circles down his spine. Even with a superficial touch, Steve could feel the knots of tension all across Tony’s back, and especially over his mid to lower back from the constant strain of sitting at his desk. 

With careful, gentle fingers, Steve worked on the knots in Tony’s back, pressing soft, adoring kisses to his temple now and then as he reached a particularly tough one to comfort Tony until the knot would finally give and fade away under Steve’s hands. 

“I’m sorry,” Tony slurred, half-asleep. “So sorry, Steve… never, never wanted to leave you.”

“It’s alright, Tony, you have nothing to apologize for,” Steve reminded him, bowing his head to reach Tony’s cheek with a kiss instead. “You didn’t leave, you just scared me, that’s all. Forget that now,” he urged him gently, “close your eyes. I’ll take care of you.”


	16. Day 17: Collaring

Tony sat on Steve’s bed, watching him pack. “Why do you have to go?”

Steve shook his head slowly, but he ducked out of his closet long enough to give Tony a quick peck on the lips before resuming packing. 

“It’s kinda like bootcamp, but for the team. I can’t skip it, and I can’t bring you. It’s only four days, Tony,” he promised, not that it made any more sense now than the other times he had explained it. 

Sure, Tony understood what Steve meant if he thought about it rationally. He just didn’t understand it when he thought about it every other way. 

“But it’s ten months tomorrow,” he said quietly, hoping it didn’t sound as pathetic as he suspected. “I graduate… I graduate next week. Defense, papers signed. I’m done.”

“And I will miss you very, very much,” Steve said with a big smile in his voice. “For twelve whole days until my internship starts. Did I tell you my place doesn’t have AC? Not that it’ll matter, I’ll be at work the hottest hours of the day, but _somebody_ lives with no air conditioning in the Bronx every other day of the year. I don’t envy them. Oh, and there’s this ice cream place a block away, Lickety Split? We have to go just for the name, right?”

Tony looked at the calendar in his phone. May 16, graduation. May 18, move back home. May 21, Orientation at R&D. Steve’s happy daydreams about what their summer together washed over him, so clear and vivid, and yet so implausible. Tony didn’t catch any specific words Steve was saying, but he didn’t have to. He shared the same dreams. Taking breaks from the workshop to visit Steve at the office. Meeting the doctors and therapists on site, Steve’s bosses and his colleagues who would be part of introducing Steve to his future career in physical therapy. 

They would grab hot dogs and stroll through the city infuriating those in their endless rush to grow older. Tony would take Steve home to his suite in the penthouse just to indulge in his reactions. Others would love the view, the Fifth Avenue real estate. The butler, the chef, the armada of cars and motorcycles. But if Tony knew Steve - and there was no doubt in his mind that he knew Steve - he’d have no interest in the cars he couldn’t drive, or the people paid to do chores he would have preferred to share with Tony. Steve would marvel at the simple luxuries of water pressure, or a tub he can stretch his long legs in. 

There was a chance Steve would be impressed by the view, but Tony wouldn’t bet the farm on that. Hell, Steve would be more likely to be impressed by the self-cleaning mechanism of the skyscraper’s windows, since that would save workers from risking their lives getting up that high to wash windows. 

Hell, if Tony didn’t love that man. He’d trade any Manhattan zip code for Brooklyn or the Bronx in a heartbeat. He’d eat ice cream in Van Cortlandt instead of in Central Park any day of the year, live in some average apartment building without a doorman and arm their home with his own damn security. 

But he was supposed to be a Stark. The next Stark, the next CEO. He could disagree with his parents, but stocks would plummet if he didn’t get up there to take the reins after Howard. People would lose their jobs, families their income. He’d heard it hundreds of times before; he owed it to them. Stark Industries was what he was meant to do. 

“Tony? Sweetheart?” 

Tony blinked his eyes up to see concern in Steve’s expression. Steve dropped the sweater he’d been rolling up and came to Tony instead, kneeling at the bed in front of him. He Tony loosely in his arms, giving Tony enough distance even in the strong, protective circle of his body. Tony never felt safer than in Steve’s arms, and inwardly he wished Steve would hold him closer and squeeze him tighter like he would never let go. 

“Tony, something’s been on your mind for weeks, you’re scaring me here,” Steve confessed after enough time had passed without a reply. “Talk to me, please.”

“I just,” Tony whispered, his voice wavering as he tried to speak. Emotions were bubbling up and threatening to escape him, and Tony pinched his mouth closed and shook his head no until he could calm himself enough to say, “I miss you already.”

It was close enough to the truth that he suddenly couldn’t breathe without crying, the relief of saying the words he’d dreaded for so long overwhelming him to the point of tears. “I miss you so much,” he kept rambling even as Steve pulled him against his chest and held him close, gently cupping the back of his head so Tony felt held and supported in every way. “I’ve never been so happy, Steve, I’m so fucking scared. I don’t know—I don’t like this, I don’t like—”

“Tony, I don’t—hey, hey, Tony? It’s going to be okay. Sweetheart, it’s not even two weeks. I know it’s a big step and it feels like a big change, but we’ll—we have all summer to think of something. You always think of something,” he added with a smile in his gentle, calming voice. “And if I have to commute, I will. Plan Z maybe, but, at least it’s there. Okay? Everything will be okay. We will be okay.”

Tony blubbered through his tears in protest. It was such a fucking lie. “You don’t know that,” he hiccuped into Steve’s shoulder. “New York could be it, we’ll be over—”

“We’re going to New York this summer,” Steve reiterated in that calm, steady voice of his that seemed to know exactly what was important in life and what wasn’t. “Once you settle in to your new job and all your anxiety about graduation and this whole transition are in the past, we’re going to talk about next year. And like I said, if we can’t think of anything, my classes for the fall are all on Wednesday-Thursday, it wouldn’t be impossible to take the train every week. Hell, I’d probably even finish most of my assignments on the train down to New York, and we’d have the rest of the week together. And in August we’ll celebrate our one year,” he added with a strange note of happiness Tony hadn’t heard before, like Steve was excited about a surprise. “And maybe… sometime between there, we’ll go to Brooklyn and I’ll introduce you to someone special.”

Tony was so lost in the hypothetical paradise Steve was painting for him that he took a wrong turn somewhere. He was quiet for a while, thinking over Steve’s words a few times before leaning back and giving him a weird look. “Brooklyn—your _mom?_ ” 

“She’s been asking; she can’t really travel much anymore, or I think she’d have been up to see you already. But if it’s too soon, I’m not in a rush. That’s a promise, okay? If you need next year on your own in Manhattan, that’s okay.”

Tony couldn’t have designed a better out of this relationship if he’d been given an algorithm and a bottle of whiskey. _I think that would be for the best,_ a rational Tony might have responded. _There will be a lot going on, he would appreciate the time to get better integrated into his role in R &D. He had a lot to prove, big shoes to fill. _

“Twelve days are already more than I can handle,” Tony grumbled instead, and Steve laughed. He could see the affection warm and glittering in Steve’s eyes. He’d never forgive himself for taking it from Steve. 

“I—well, I guess tonight's the same as tomorrow morning,” Steve said to himself. For a second, Tony thought he’d been day dreaming again and missed a step, but then Steve leaned back and reached for the ball chain that carried his dog tags around his neck. He held the dog tags in the palm of his hand, weighing them and his decision one last time before gently threading the chain over Tony’s head. 

The dog tags landed over Tony’s sternum with a muffled, metallic clink. He lifted the two steel tags in his palm. Steven G. Rogers. Social, type O, Catholic. Sarah E. Rogers, Brooklyn, NY. 

“Hold on to it for me?” Steve asked in a voice so quiet and a smile so shy he probably would have tried to brush it off as a joke if Tony balked. 

But like the selfish dick he was, Tony closed his fist around Steve’s dog tags. Nobody would take them from him. 

“Won’t you get in trouble for not having them?” he asked anyway, because offering to purchase him a replacement wasn’t out of the question. 

Steve couldn’t stop smiling. “I won’t see Charlie until the end of August,” Steve promised with a touch of mischief in his excitement. “You didn’t hear it from me, but maybe… maybe, you know. You’ll have something from me by then. Something even better.”

Steve’s buoyant excitement was infectious, his hope and optimistic vision for their future together so innocent and complete that Tony almost bought it, hook, line, and sinker. 

But Tony knew it wouldn’t happen. Their story would end soon, and it would be Tony himself who would turn his back on Steve and walk away.


	17. Day 18: Role Reversal *

Irony had an uncanny way of rearing her nasty head when Tony least needed it. How was he supposed to explain to his committee that he, a lauded genius saddled with the potential to lead his generation into a new era of technological advancements, had lost his entire presentation to a fried hard drive?

Tony was going to die. His defense was in less than 48 hours. He had worked on his charts, his graphs - his simulations, his videos, _everything_ ; this was week’s worth of work lost in a few lousy seconds. But worst of all, he was Tony fucking Stark. How was he supposed to face anybody after _technology ate his fucking presentation?_ How would anybody believe him?

He could feel his heart stuttering in his panic, and if Tony didn’t know any better, he’d be convinced the pieces of his dead, miserable computer were living out their next lives somewhere in his arteries, punishing him with his every breath for recklessly overworking them. Any minute now, they would reach his heart and tear it to ribbons and Tony would spill out of his chair and curl up on the speckled linoleum floor that hadn’t been vacuumed since Steve last visited, and die like a poisoned insect.

When the phone rang, Tony reached for it on instinct. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t speak, he only went through the motion of connecting the phone and holding it to his ear.

“…Tony?” Steve asked after a brief silence. “Sweetheart, are you there?”

“I’m here and I’ll never go anywhere or amount to anything because I’m going to fail. I’m going to _fail_ ,” Tony croaked, feeling his soul crumbling under the weight of the words. The committee wouldn’t pass him if he just got up there with a robot and monologued like some benevolent Bond villain. Proof, he needed to show them _proof_ of his findings, _proof_ that Dum-E had been learning skills over time. It was one thing to read it on a page, but he needed to show them—

“Tony, are you there? Can you hear me? You’re not going to fail,” Steve raised his voice to say. “What’s happening, sweetheart? What happened?”

“My computer, the hard drive, it’s all—it’s all gone, I have a back-up from weeks ago but it doesn’t have my charts or the, the video of Dum-E’s skills—”

“You sent me videos of him, remember? I have some of them—I took some of them,” Steve reminded him. “We’ll figure out the charts. What else?”

A shrill note of white noise filled Tony’s head. _Of course_ , he showed Steve everything. “It’s, uh,” he stammered while his brain reconnected to the server. “That’s, that’s the worst of it, I can, I think I can recreate the rest, maybe. But it—I have to send it to the printer tomorrow by noon, I—”

“Sweetheart, listen to me,” Steve said in a loud but gentle voice. Tony whined but shut his mouth to listen. “Step away from your computer. Take a long, warm shower. I will see you in forty minutes.”

And then he hung up. Tony waited for several seconds before looking at his phone to confirm, but sure enough, his wonderful, thoughtful, loving boyfriend had hung up on him without reminding Tony that he loved him.

Distantly he knew it was a tiny detail to focus on, and that Steve was probably rushing to get to him, but that acknowledgement was overwhelmed by the reminder that soon Steve would not be calling him. Soon, Tony would have no reason to receive Steve’s texts, phone calls, or delivered flowers to remind him that Steve was thinking about him, that Steve loved him.

For one fleeting moment, he entertained the idea of sabotaging his own defense and staying on for one more year. One more year of his life together with Steve, being there for him as Steve finished his degree. That way Tony would even be there to see Steve in his graduation robes, stand in the crowd to watch him walk across the stage to accept his degree. His heart could burst with pride just thinking about it.

If only it was that easy.

***

Tony had just pulled his sweats on when Steve knocked on his door and let himself in. He had two laptop bags slung over his shoulders.

“Here, I brought you my computer,” Steve said, not wasting any time on unnecessary niceties. He hauled one laptop bag off after the other, unpacking his laptop and his large Wacom tablet. “It’s not much, but it’s enough to make a presentation. It’s easier to just draw them sometimes, so I brought the tablet, too.”

Usually, Tony understood what words meant when people spoke to him. He blinked back at Steve, and eventually asked, “Draw what?”

“Visualizations for your presentation,” Steve explained, logging into his computer then stepping away from it so Tony could take the seat at his desk. “I was thinking it would be a good way to show them the different physical skills Dum-E has learned? Your robot can operate a freaking fire extinguisher, Tony,” Steve reminded him as he urged Tony to take the seat. “Do you realize how incredible that is?”

“Dum-E can make smoothies, too,” Tony said even though Steve already knew everything about Dum-E. He could be cool and nonchalant about most things, but he not when people praised his little learner-bot.

“I bet it’d be a memorable way to start your defense, letting Dum-E make everyone a smoothie,” Steve said with a smile, but he shook the thought away and leaned in to press a kiss to Tony’s forehead. “Presentation first. The videos I have of Dum-E’s work are on the computer. What else do you need, sweetheart? What can I do?” Steve asked. “Have you eaten?”

Tony reached for Steve’s hand and brought it to his lips, kissing his fingers before pressing his cheek to the back of Steve’s hand. “I had dinner,” he promised in a whisper. “Stay?”

“Do you want me to sketch out some of Dum-E’s skills?” Steve asked, already reaching for his tablet to get started.

Tony snorted quietly to himself. “What I want is a blowjob, but when did I—”

Before Tony finished snarking about his tragic lot in life, Steve abruptly cut him off by tugging Tony’s chair away from the desk and spinning him around. Speechless, Tony watched Steve sink to his knees between Tony’s feet.

Steve didn’t linger or waste any time. “Quick one now,” Steve promised, as if it hadn’t been an off-hand joke. “More later.”

Unlike his fantasies for power play and dominance while fucking Tony, Steve had never been shy about oral sex. He took to his task like fish to water, explicitly inviting Tony from day one to grab him by the hair, to be more assertive and vocal about what he needed. At nineteen and in his first relationship that hadn’t begun with a one-night stand, Tony had still been hesitant. After all, when you avoided versatiles and other bottoms like the plague, you learned to live with the consequences.

Steve wouldn’t have it. Sometimes his blowjobs were slow and tender, the tribute of a devoted man at the altar, thorough and gentle with his exploring fingers and soft lips. He would take his time, laving the length of Tony’s cock with the flat of his tongue, or hold Tony still as he softly sucked on the head of his cock and massaged his inner thighs until Tony wept and begged to come.

But more often than not, Steve used Tony’s cock like he used his ass - ravenous, insatiable, and impatient, like nothing mattered except wringing the orgasm from Tony’s body.

The first time he had shared with Tony that he had been thinking about the taste of Tony’s cock to the point of distraction, how he had dreamed about the feel of him on his tongue, or the burn of friction down his throat if Tony would ever fuck his mouth, Tony thought it was a hallucination. He’d stared back at Steve, a dominant top if Tony had ever met one, and wondered if April 1st was making a winter-time encore just at Tony’s expense.

Steve had told Tony to be as bold with his demands and as rough with his mouth as he wished. At the time, Tony hadn’t known about Steve’s fantasy of being used for sex—for someone to see him as nothing more than a cock for someone’s anonymous, meaningless fuck. Instead, Tony had been cautious, and only risked a few tentative tugs of Steve’s hair. A good top was hard to find, and Tony didn’t want to scare him off.

Steve had gotten the message loud and clear. He had pulled away and shoved Tony down onto his back, pinning Tony to the mattress with one big paw over his chest. After that, it didn’t matter how Tony squirmed and thrust his hips. Steve was strong enough to hold him down, and he kept Tony spread out for himself like a banquet feast. Tony had learned quickly that day that Steve wasn’t a man to bullshit or tip-toe around sex.

Time hadn’t diminished Steve’s dedicated enthusiasm. Even now, after a year and with nothing left to prove, Steve had wasted no time pulling Tony’s cock out of his sweats, guiding Tony’s legs over his shoulders, and swallowing his cock down with the hunger of a starving man.

It was Steve’s mouth being used, his lips tight around Tony’s hardening cock and his cheeks hollowed as he coaxed him to hardness, but it was Tony who was reeling. The shock alone drove him wild. Mere seconds ago Steve had kissed his forehead and offered him solidarity in reviving his presentation, and now, without warning, Tony’s cock was growing firm, wet, and warm in the smooth, velvety sleeve of Steve’s mouth.

Steve reached out with his tongue and lapped at Tony’s balls while he still could, all but slurping the soft skin up into his mouth. Tony choked on a shout of surprise, and around him, Steve responded with a deep, guttural moan. The blood drained into his cock so fast Tony was sure he was becoming dangerously lightheaded, and he barely managed to keep his eyes open and on Steve’s face, but he was transfixed. As his cock grew harder, Tony stared, wide-eyed, as Steve’s spit-slick lips stretched obscenely around its girth, and Tony could practically feel Steve’s throat being rubbed raw with every eager bob of his head.

If Tony still felt shame in Steve’s presence, he’d be in trouble. But Steve’s entire world had narrowed down to making Tony come in his mouth, and he was a determined, stubborn man who would not be denied. Tony tried to hold out as long he could, but he was left panting with his sweat tickling down his spine and warming the small of his back—soon, all he could do was bite into one fist while he clutched at Steve’s hair with the other, urging his face down as his hips thrust up wildly as he came down Steve’s throat, filling him with gushes of his come.

Minutes passed before Steve even tried to pull off his softening cock. Tony’s fingers twitched in Steve’s hair but released him without a fight when Steve tried to get to his feet. With a surge of energy Tony didn’t have to spare, he latched onto Steve’s t-shirt and hauled him in for a kiss. Steve went willingly. At the first scrape of Tony’s teeth, Steve parted his lips and submitted to Tony’s deep, eager kiss until Tony was practically sucking the taste of his own come off Steve’s tongue.

“Love you so much,” Tony rasped breathlessly into Steve’s panting mouth, pressing their lips together in another kiss, desperate to kiss him again and again and again even as they both struggled to catch their breaths. Try as he might, Tony couldn’t stop kissing Steve, or touching his hair, his ears, his face as he spouted praise and love and affection for the man who kept his heart in his euphoric relief. “Love you, my tech hero, my, my—I fucking love you, Steve, I’d be lost without you.”

Color rose in Steve’s cheeks at the words pouring out of Tony’s mouth, and he ducked his head with a bashful smile. He took a moment to steady himself before he could look up and meet Tony’s eyes.

He looked like he was falling in love with the stars.

“There’s nothing you can’t do, Tony,” Steve whispered, gently cradling Tony’s face in his hands. “You’ve never needed me to get there, but if I can help you, sweetheart, I won’t let you down.”


	18. Day 19: Public *

The day of Tony’s defense passed much like Steve had predicted: flawlessly. Looking back, Tony was pretty sure he could have stood there in silence, lined up all the awards he had already received for Dum-E, and stilled graduated with the highest distinction.

Tony moved back to New York as planned. He was folded into Howard’s leading R&D team from day one. Between the pressure to perform and the exceptional standards set by the team, Tony lost himself in his work. There were no weak links in the flagship lab, and newcomers weren’t afforded any slack. Especially not the owner’s son.

The fact that Tony kept up with them and even offered advancements of his own didn’t seem to affect how they looked down their noses at him. In that first week, they sent him out like a common messenger boy to retrieve a component for a design that some bigwig in Harvard had created.

The self-important asshole hadn’t felt a meeting time was necessary, but told Tony he’d send him an email once he was free to meet with him. He didn’t want to give the guy an excuse to say Tony hadn’t done his job well, so he couldn’t make any plans to see Steve or his friends at MIT.

Luckily, it was BU’s reading week ahead of their final exams, so Steve made the trek out to Cambridge to see Tony after six long days apart.

“I feel melodramatic, ‘six long days,’” Tony grumbled in the little courtyard they had found to eat the lunch Steve had brought with him. “Howard said I have to be a team player if I want to take over the company. I have to ‘understand how people work in my company,’ which is outright bullshit—he never did it. He just wants me under his thumb, I fucking know it.”

Steve hummed thoughtfully for a while as he chewed his sandwich. “None of them were invited to CERN, were they?”

Despite himself, Tony smiled a little at Steve’s question. “No,” Tony confirmed, smug in his spot of validation. “Their imagination is limited by how much they can destroy using science.”

“That’s who’s staffing the most prestigious lab in your dad’s company?” Steve asked after a beat, clearly less than impressed. Even without their relationship, Steve knew that Stark Industries was a big deal to every branch of the military. But he had also been open about how glad he’d been that Tony was different, that his inventions and patents were more about how to support people than how to arm them.

“In his defense, and I never say that lightly,” Tony replied, as objectively and calmly as he could. “Howard gets enough military funding to support other scientific advancements. I don’t really feel the balance is fair,” he added, “but even at a minimum he’s got a substantial backing for sustainable farming and communication technology.”

“Nothing against your dad,” Steve said, “but I can’t wait to see what you do with the company.”

As if he had no doubt all that military money couldn't tempt Tony to continue the same destructive path. As if there was something inherent about Tony that couldn’t be bought.

It wasn’t news; Steve had made his feelings clear on multiple occasions in the months leading up to Tony’s graduation. But his faith in Tony always had the same effect, and even now, in a relatively unfamiliar campus, Tony desperately wanted to find a corner where they could hide and he could express his sudden inspiration of gratitude.

Steve recognized the look on his face and started packing up. “You’re on the job,” he said without preamble. “No. No, you’re not going to give those assholes running the lab any ammunition against you,” he insisted, even grabbing the paper plate Tony was still using in his hurry to clear off the table and get them moving.

Five minutes later, Tony shoved Steve into the fleeting privacy between the stacks overlooking the reading room. His own belt and jeans were undone, and if he could only tear himself away from Steve’s soft lips and his clever tongue, he could get on to his prize. But Steve’s arms were quickly closing around him, too lost in the kiss to release Tony for anything.

When Steve’s hands squeezed into Tony’s jeans and squeezed his cheeks in large, greedy palmfuls, Tony stuttered forward against Steve’s chest with a gasp of surprise. Steve hadn’t fucked him since Tony moved, but the way he spread Tony’s ass and pulled at his hole with his strong fingers, it was clear Steve knew him well enough to guess Tony’s treasure chest had come into heavy rotation in their week apart. 

“Lube?” Steve panted against Tony’s lips, sounding so hopeful Tony would say yes that he bordered on desperate.

Without a word, Tony squirmed in the tight confines of Steve’s arms enough to reach into his own front pocket where he’d stashed a single packet of water-based lube. Steve smirked down at the little pillow and its convenient twist-off top, but if he had any thoughts about Tony’s presumption that they’d have sex in their short afternoon together, he didn’t share it.

Steve pressed away from the wall and turned Tony so he faced the free-standing bookshelf. It brought them a few feet closer to the main aisle of the balcony, just enough that Tony could even peek over the railing if he made an effort. Steve guided Tony into a wider stance as he jerked Tony’s jeans down past his ass, leaving his cheeks fully out on display. Tony gripped onto the metal ledge of the bookshelf he was facing, and desperately tried to remember that he couldn’t lean against it, that he’d somehow have to push back to meet Steve’s thrusts if he didn’t want to topple the shelves and announce their presence with a terrible scene. But Steve pulled him back by his hips until Tony balanced on the balls of his feet, his ass turned up for Steve.

In the narrow width between the two bookshelves Tony had randomly pushed them into, Steve knelt directly behind him, so close that Tony could feel the soft gusts of his breath warming his exposed ass. Without warning or build up, Steve spread Tony’s cheeks with one hand and dove in to lick and suck at his furrowed hole as it pulsed under Steve’s mouth in Tony’s excitement. But this wasn’t the time for foreplay, and while Steve was enjoying himself and his view, Tony faced the aisle. He couldn’t help but feel the impending risk of being discovered, and while the coast was still clear, that didn’t mean it would be for long.

He thrust his hips back into Steve’s face to get his attention. “Fuck me if you’re gonna fuck me,” he hissed with an intentional wiggle of his ass. “Six days, Steve, I need it, fuck me—”

Steve rose to his feet and clapped a hand over Tony’s mouth to quiet him. When he finally indulged Tony enough to finger his spit-slick hole, Steve’s fingers were well-coated in lube. Distantly it occured to Tony that maybe that’s why Steve had only spread his ass for rimming one-handed, but it didn’t so much matter as one and then two fingers were fucked into his ass. Tony had gone to bed with Cesar the night before, his black special occasion monster dildo, so it didn’t take Steve long before he was fucking three thick fingers into Tony, twisting and stretching his rim until he was satisfied.

Steve leaned back for a moment to spread what was left of the lube packet over his cock, line up, and in one, quick thrust, buried himself to the hilt in Tony’s body. Cesar may have been substantially bigger than Steve’s cock, but nothing compared to the brutal, greedy power Steve exuded every time he buried his cock deep in Tony. Tony rose to his tip-toes from the force of Steve’s hips, and he held on to the shelf for dear life as Steve took possession of his body again, claiming him again and again with every thrust.

The hand over his mouth muffled Tony’s first, breathless moan of pleasure, and Steve angled Tony’s head back to bite into the shell of his ear, releasing it slowly past his teeth before he clamped down over Tony’s earlobe again and sucked on it with insatiable delight.

“Mine,” he hissed against Tony’s ear with Tony’s earlobe captured between his sharp teeth, punctuating his claim with a forceful snap of his hips. “Don’t you forget.”

For one delirious moment, Tony was convinced Steve’s cock pushed up against his diaphragm to leave him breathless. Steve release his bruising grip of Tony’s hip to reach around and jerk Tony off. The first stroke of his strong fist had Tony’s eyes rolling back in his head, and Steve stuffed four fingers into Tony’s mouth to gag and distract him from shouting. Tony gurgled around Steve’s thick fingers, drooling and trying to express to Steve this mad wave of pleasure overwhelming him when his orgasm took him.

Steve didn’t even try to catch his come in his palm, stroking Tony off through the very last spasms of his orgasm with his cock pointed right at the book spines facing them.

The natural high of his orgasm left Tony incoherent on cloud nine. His body clutched around Steve’s cock with an instinctive hunger, milking him for his orgasm. Steve’s hips stuttered as he pounded into Tony. When he buried himself one last time and came deep in Tony’s body, the force of it flattened Tony against the bookshelf, rattling the books on their shelves.

Tony continued sucking leisurely on Steve’s fingers and moaning his delight with every subsequent little roll of Steve’s hips as he chased every last pulse of euphoria, filling Tony with his come. The satisfaction and high of being fucked left Tony so blissed out he arched like a lazy cat after Steve, completely disconnected from the urgency of their situation.

Carefully, Steve pulled out and pushed his softening cock back into his briefs. Instead of helping to clean Tony up or pull his pants up, Steve pressed two fingers into him, finger-fucking Tony slowly through the mess of Steve’s come inside him.

“Go to your meeting, do your job,” Steve growled hoarsely against Tony’s neck as Tony shuddered against the bookshelf and mewled his pleasure. “Whatever else you do, think of me.”


	19. Day 20: Dirty talk

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Carol took the bar seat next to him, but Steve didn’t look up from his drink. She sat where Tony had sat over a year ago when they had first met, when they had first gotten to know each other. It had all been so curious and exciting and simple, then. 

“Steve? Hey, we’re worried about you, you haven’t been answering your phone for hours. Are you even listening to me?” she asked more irritably. “This is serious, Steve. Bucky’s out there with a baseball bat and a short temper looking for you. The Superbros are marching on Boston.”

Steve grimaced and finished the last of his pint. It may have been his fifth or sixth drink, he wasn’t so sure. “Tell them to fuck off,” he told her with a quiet sniff. “Leave me alone.”

Carol didn’t say anything for a long time. She texted a cease and desist to Sam and Bucky, but otherwise remained silent. Instead, she ordered herself a Coke, and she sat next to Steve for a long, long time. As long as it took.

“His parents made him do it, he said,” Steve eventually muttered under his breath, a quiet hiccup catching in his voice. “He said he still, that he still loves me. But what’s… what’s wrong with me? Is it a gay thing? They knew about me the whole summer. I met his mom.”

Carol took the time to think about what she said before responding. “There is only one thing a Stark doesn’t have in infinite supply, Steve,” she reminded him. “Time. Tony went out of his way to spend as much of it with you as he could. James said it was more likely a business thing.”

Steve frowned into his empty glass, then glared at her. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’m not rich enough?”

“Not connected enough,” she corrected, gently but clearly honest. “They’re business socialites, Steve. He’s their only son, they want him to be with someone who benefits the company.”

“What bullsh—what century is he living in!” Steve cried, then slammed his empty glass down in his sudden spike of anger. “He’s—he’s not some fucking _pawn_ , Carol! Whatever your, your boyfriend told you is a goddamn lie. Tony is smart and clever, and he’s too damn strong to be bullied into some business arrangement by his parents.”

“Steve,” Carol said with a small, doleful smile. “He’s twenty years old. They’re his parents.”

“And so what? Because he’s twenty he doesn’t know what he’s doing? He’s just a puppet?” Steve snarled, and it didn’t matter that Tony had dumped him, helped him back and then dropped it on him in his last hours before he returned to Boston. However unfair and unexpected it had been, Steve would never deny everything he knew about Tony. If he was nothing else, Tony was a good man. A good man who didn’t deserve to be talked about like this.

“He’s smarter than all of us combined, Carol, he—”

“No, that’s not what I mean,” Carol interrupted him, speaking firmly but without raising her voice. “Steve, think about it. James said they were really manipulative assholes, they would know how to push his buttons.”

The doors burst open as Bucky and Sam elbowed each other through the door, marching in their hurry to get to Steve first without running like losers. Thor and the rest of the Superbro Caucus trailed in behind them, filling the bar and gathering around Steve and Carol’s stools like a broclipse, or a Superbro Curtain that obscured Steve and Carol from the rest of the bar.

“Where’s that rat bastard?” Sam announced to the public at large in the bar, some of whom had paused what they were doing to peek at the thirty-some odd men who filed in to hover and glower. “I will smack the white privilege out of that boy.”

“Shut up, man. You’re black. Don’t make it a race thing,” Bucky groaned, “ _I_ will smack the white privilege out of that capitalist, war-profiteering republican—”

Steve was going to be sick. He needed to get away from these loudmouthed vigilantes, but there was no easy way past them. He tried to wrap his arms over his head to block them out, but they were so loud and so close. It was finally Carol who started ordering them to take a step back and to give her and Steve some space. They meant well, but they were a little dumb as a herd. 

“How’re you going to do that, ding-dong? With a Louisville Slugger?”

“I don’t care if I have to stand on a balcony to drop an anvil over his head, Wile E Coyote style,” Bucky promised, “that asshole hurt my best friend. What has Steve _not_ done for him? How did he deserve to be dumped?”

“We are in agreement,” Thor boomed, presumably speaking to Steve, or to Bucky. It wasn’t clear. “Dumping was unreasonable and unexpected. Stark must answer for his behavior.”

“That’s supposed to help?” Steve heard Carol snap at them, and an indistinguishable amount of time passed with them shouting around him before he felt something large, warm, and heavy drape over his back, and strong arms closing around him.

“James, finally,” Carol said amid the loud disagreements from Bucky and Sam and others as Steve was gently pulled off his stool and led away from the bar. His legs were unsteady and his knees gelatinous, and as unhappy Steve was about being moved, he wasn’t all that confident he could put the breaks on without toppling over.

He was led to a bus stop a few yards away from the bar, where he was shown to a bench he could sit on.

James Rhodes crouched down in front of him. Steve’s head tipped forward. He wanted to hate Rhodes so bad.

“Listen, I heard what happened,” Rhodes said in that infuriating calm Steve couldn’t stand anymore.

“I know _what happened_ , I fucking was there, wasn’t I?” Steve snarled as heavy footsteps approached. “Tell me _why_ it happened, Rhodes. What did—”

“Are you telling him lies, Flyboy?” Bucky growled at Rhodes, stalking up behind Steve like a shadow. He wasn’t as sober as James, but he was angry, and he had the Slugger. Rhodes slowly rose to his feet, but even unarmed, he stood his ground.

“I’m not here to start anything,” he told Bucky and Steve calmly.

“Your friend thinks he can just use people and spit us out when he’s finished just cause he’s got money? Well, tough titties!” Bucky shouted at him, “nobody’s taking advantage of my best friend! Not on my fucking watch.”

Rhodes turned his attention to Steve, who was cold and shivering and broken, and no more cooperative than his best friend.

“I just got back from New York,” Rhodes told Steve calmly. Steve wouldn’t look at him again, but he did hold his hand up when Bucky started barking in reply, wordlessly asking his friend to be quiet. “Listen, I know he hurt you, man. But the way he’s hurting… this has been on his mind for months. I don’t know what lies his parents pushed on him this time, but this isn’t something he’s chosen to do, Steve. I don’t know how that’ll help, but just… it wasn’t anything you did, alright?”

Somehow, that only made Steve feel more hopeless. All that time, when Steve had begged Tony to talk? When he had told himself Tony’s weird behavior was the stress of his thesis defense? If what Rhodes said was true, Tony had lied to his face all along.

“What am I supposed to do with that?” Steve asked in a small voice, unable to even look Rhodes in the eyes anymore. “If you’re asking me to wait for him—”

“Yeah, you hear that, Rhodes? Not my Steve, he’ll have a date in two fucking hours,” Bucky chimed in with a vindictive laugh.

“I’m not asking you to wait for him, Steve. He wouldn’t want you to, either,” Rhodes said before Bucky or Steve said anything else. “It’s not fair, and it’s a shitty situation. I get that, Steve. I just know something of what you’re going through,” Rhodes finally explained, a little more quietly. “And I wish I’d had someone to tell me it wasn’t anything I did wrong. And I was just a best friend who was too black. Howard didn’t want me alienating future investors.”

Steve stared at him, and even Bucky looked taken aback.

“What the hell?” he muttered, glancing between Rhodes and the back of Steve’s head. “Tony knows his dad’s racist as hell, right?”

“He knows, and he doesn’t like it,” James said with the patience of a man who had clearly been through the ringer a few times. “Later, he told me his mom had taken him on a tour of the company where he met and talked with other scientists, and later explained to him that all those scientists Tony liked would lose their jobs if investors left. It wasn’t their fault investors were racist, it was just a fact. He was sixteen. He didn’t talk to me for weeks, until he got back to MIT.”

Steve stared up at Rhodes, horrified. “How… they’d do that to their own son?”

Behind Steve, Bucky was looking less and less angry, and a lot more uncomfortable. He cleared his throat and gently patted Steve on the shoulder. “Hey, Stevie, maybe, you know. Maybe you should be happy you got out?”

“He doesn’t have many friends, you know,” Rhodes said before Steve had a chance to acknowledge Bucky’s point. “I just wanted to talk to you before you forget the good stuff you had, and ask that, you know. Wait, don’t wait, that’s none of my business. But when Tony calls, be a friend to him and pick up? He doesn’t have enough friends to lose you, too.”


	20. Day 21-22: Branding, Cuckold

Normally, if Steve had the lousy fortune of having all of his midterm exams stacked at the start of the week, he would have taken the rest of the exam week off to be with Tony. That meant he would either convince Tony to take a break from his work (maybe eat a warm meal, maybe disconnect from WiFi for an hour or two), or if Steve felt particularly tired, he’d poke and prod at Tony until he relocated from the lab to his dorm room so Steve could crash on Tony’s bed while Tony worked from his room. Typically, Tony wouldn’t last more than thirty minutes at his desk before he crawled into bed with Steve, but at least it wouldn’t be Steve’s fault. 

Steve was finished with his midterms by Tuesday, 1pm. He had nowhere to go. Nobody was waiting to celebrate the end of midterms with him, nobody was waiting to hold him after days apart. Steve adored his friends and they each had their place in his life, but Tony had a knack for making even the worst test feel like a victory. At the very least, he would say it was _done_. 

All his friends had their own midterms to worry about, so Steve rolled back into bed with every intention of hiding under his blankets where the world wouldn’t find him until his next lecture six days later. 

His peace didn’t last for forty minutes. 

The door opened and closed with a slam, and to Steve’s groan of discontent for being woken so rudely, Patrick said, “Aw shit, didn’t see you there, bro. Sorry, dude. Guess you saw the papers, huh?” 

Patrick meant well, Steve reminded himself. He wasn’t the most tactful guy on the planet, but he meant well. That didn’t mean Steve’s hands didn’t itch to punch his roommate in the teeth. The pain of it would have been welcome, even. 

It took him a minute to catch up. He pushed the covers off his face and stared up at his roommate. “Saw what?”

“Google it, dude. Turns out your loverboy’s down with the swirl.”

Before Steve had to ask, Patrick did him the favor of tossing him his laptop. Steve sat up and typed Tony’s name into the Google search box immediately. 

_Rebound of a lifetime: Duckie Thot takes home the sole heir to the Stark fortune, but can she keep him? His track record says no._

_Speedy recovery? Not ten hours after rumors of split from Jan van Dyne, Tony Stark leaves charity event with Australian model Duckie Thot._

_Who is the Sudanese-Australian beauty comforting genius playboy millionaire Tony Stark tonight? 7 things you need to know about Duckie Thot._

_After 81 long days of attempted monogamy, Tony Stark breaks free! See what models are on the menu this week._

_Tony Stark steps out on socialite galpal one too many times. A source close to the family reveals Maria Stark in tears as early engagement rumors shatter._

_Tony Stark determined to follow in his father’s footsteps: women, booze, and scientific advancements to define a generation._

_Jan van Dyne has had enough! The shocking affair that even Tony Stark’s pockets couldn’t overcome._

Steve didn’t have the stomach to click on a single article. There was no question Tony’s rumored date was beautiful in every sense of the word. She didn’t deserve to be hated, she’d done nothing wrong, but Steve’s heart grew cold just looking at her. 

He scrubbed his hand over his face, cursing under his breath as his fingers came away wet with tears. With a vindictive resentment, Steve wished someone would lock her in a room with a Costco sheet cake and a fork as a personal favor to him. 

His thoughts got no further before shame washed over him in a cold sweat. Hell, if he’d be honest, he’d rather just take the sheet cake and fork for himself and eat his sorrows away. 

“You okay, bro?” 

Steve jumped out of skin with a squeal of terror and slammed his laptop shut as if he’d been caught staring at porn in class. He had forgotten he wasn’t alone in his room. 

“Sorry ‘bout the shitty news, dude,” Patrick said after a beat, sounding sincerely bummed out on Steve’s behalf. He pushed away from his desk to rummage through his drawer for a second before stretching across the room to offer Steve an unopened bottle of Johnnie Walker. 

Steve blinked at the bottle in his confusion, but he accepted it anyway. “Your emergency stash?”

“Yeah, but whatevs, man. We’re cool,” Patrick said with a bashful little shrug. “You look like you need it more than I ever did.”


	21. Day 23-25: Size difference, Shower/Bath, Ofactophilia (Scent)

It didn’t matter how many showers he took, Tony never felt clean. His skin felt too small for his body, itchy and dry no matter what vitamins he took or lotion he used. The discomfort was a constant distraction; nothing felt right. He would hug his mother even though it felt stifling and irritating, he would smile and shake hands even though his face ached and his fingers wanted to curl into protective fists. But he was Tony Stark. If he couldn’t keep up a charade, who could? 

He never had a particular hygiene routine until he and Steve got serious. Whether he did it intentionally or not, Steve got Tony hooked on taking long, warm baths after working in the workshop. Those baths were always improved with Steve’s hands and Steve’s laughter, and if he turned off all the lights and pulled the curtain, Tony could pretend that he was back in their suite at the Commonwealth, nude except for his dog tags and soaking in the tub as he waited for Steve to walk in through the door to join him. 

Some people dreamed of sleeping in a bed with stacks of Benjamins, and others would covet the chance to tumble into bed with their favorite models or Hollywood A-lister. Then there was Tony, who could sit in his personal rooftop jacuzzi overlooking the Manhattan skyline and comfort himself with the idea that Steve was only running late from his lecture. Tony’s phone was an arm’s length away, and any moment it would buzz to life with an apologetic text from Steve, who would apologize endlessly for not being there to personally undress Tony for their bath at the end of the work day, and promise Tony a kiss for every second he was late. 

It wasn’t that they never talked. On Thanksgiving, Tony had ducked out of a family business dinner early to make that first call to Steve. Their conversation had been stilted at first, Steve struggling to restrict himself to only using Tony’s given name, and Tony fighting back tears. What he wouldn’t give for the freedom to ask Steve to forgive him, to take him back. The freedom to leave Stark Industries behind and live his own life, pursuing his own projects and sharing it all with Steve. 

In those moments, his mother’s words would float back through his thoughts, dispelling any hope of abandoning his responsibilities. He was intended to take the business. His parents, she would always remind him, were always on his side. They wanted him to live a good life, a life uninhibited by the burdens they had faced themselves. Tony had so many more resources and luxuries than they had ever grown up with, and she often reminded him that it was all thanks to his father’s genius and endless effort. What mattered most was the company now, and all the families that relied on Stark Industries for their livelihood. Investors believed in the Stark genius, they trusted Howard Stark’s son as the only person to produce equally profitable marvels in the coming generation. Without Tony, investments would suffer, and the families depending on them would be without work, without an income. 

With his mother’s words in mind, Tony and Steve had found a way to be friends. Steve had called in December to wish Tony a merry Christmas. Tony had called Steve in January to tell him he’d been invited back to CERN in the spring for experiments he couldn’t complete without the Hadron collider. 

Steve had been happy for him, but Steve had never called back. It had been months, and still Steve hadn’t called. Tony should be angry. He should be irritated that Steve hadn’t recognized the clear pattern of calling responsibility, but even he knew it didn’t matter. Did Steve not understand that, too? Tony would forgive Steve for anything if Steve would just call. 

Eventually, Tony had enough. Sitting in his hot tub and watching his phone was pointless. He climbed out of the jacuzzi, bundled against the winter chill in a thick bathrobe, and made his way to his suite. Water dripped in his wake, leaving a trail from his rooftop lounge, through the apartment, and into his closet. He had left Duckie sleeping in his bed in the morning when he left for his workshop. She had stayed with him for months on and off, but aside for the small collection of toiletries next to the second sink in his bathroom, there was no sign of her presence. He had not invited her to more, and she had not asked for a drawer or space to hang up her clothes. They both liked it that way. 

Instead, kept far from prying eyes in the back of Tony’s closet, he kept Steve’s clothes. The two button ups he’d taken to practice ironing on and only ever slept in. The small collection of Steve’s briefs, all a size too large for Tony, but they fit in his hands, where it most mattered. He’d smuggled them away from Steve on those spontaneous nights they spent in Tony’s room, and he fondly remembered the feigned attempts to help Steve locate his underwear the next morning, only to regretfully send his gorgeous stud back to Boston commando. 

Aside from the dog tags that he never took off, Tony’s prized possession, his most cherished memento, was Steve’s ROTC hoodie. It was enormous, large even on Steve, and Tony happily drowned himself in its soft, warm embrace. The nights were still so cold, and on nights like these, when he wasn’t too tired or drunk to remember, Tony would open the windows to let the cold air in so he could soak in the warmth of Steve’s sweater as he drifted to sleep. 

Sometimes, on the hazy cusp between lucidity and his dreams, Tony believed he could smell Steve in the thick fabric of his sweatshirt. Not the spicy, clean scent of Steve’s cologne, but the natural musk of his body, the memory of his sweat. Maybe to others it would not be so adored, and most would roll their eyes at his childish hope. Steve had not worn the sweater in over seven months, and while Tony refused to wash the hoodie, nothing could last forever. 

A soft jingle pulled him from the gentle comfort of sleep. Groggy and confused, he blinked his eyes open until he saw it. 

There, on his bedside table, his phone vibrated with an incoming call. Tony pushed himself up and crawled closer to stare at the screen in his disbelief. 

Steve was calling. 

*** 

“I couldn’t sleep,” Steve admitted in a whisper, careful of his tone even though Patrick happily snored in his bed on his half of the room. “It feels so strange. In three months, I’ll be an adult. A real adult, with a job and bills and… I don’t really know what else adults do,” he finished lamely, shrugging to himself. “But I’ll have to figure it out.”

Tony hummed down the line, and Steve could just imagine him smiling. He always liked to imagine Tony smiling. “Are you still thinking about living with your mom?”

“Assuming I don’t fail anything this semester,” Steve hedged, careful not to jinx himself. “Mom is only thirty minutes from the clinic. She offered to cosign a lease with me, did I tell you? Maybe I’ll do that later. It just feels like a lot to figure out at the same time. Maybe I can have some savings in my pocket, find a better place to stay.”

“You’ll probably find a better place if you’re not hurrying, too,” Tony said in agreement, “sometimes it’s worth waiting to find the right place. It’s your home, it should be the right one.”

Over the past seven months, Steve had learned to cope. He couldn’t even lie to himself yet about moving on, but he was at a place in his life where he could hang out with his friends without missing Tony beside him. He could hear the songs that he knew Tony liked without wanting to cry, and he could remember the good times without resenting the present. 

It was the future Steve struggled with. Imagining a future without Tony was still miserable, and now, talking about where he would be living in New York after graduation cut him in a way no physical wound could hurt. How could Tony talk about home as if it was a place? How perfectly had Steve failed in his expression of love and commitment that Tony hadn’t learned that _he_ was Steve’s home? He wanted to live in Tony’s laugh, in Tony’s wild imagination, in Tony’s optimism and dreams for the future to his last breath. 

He turned the simple, gold band over in his fingers. It was polished to a shine, as it always was, and warm from the touch of his skin. Steve normally carried it in the ball chain necklace with his dog tags, but on the rougher days when he really didn’t want to face the world or deal with anyone, he wore it on his pinky to remind him of someone who was worth that effort. He wasn’t a genius, but Tony had never allowed him to entertain _can’t_. Tony believed in _try_. 

Even on his shittiest day, Steve couldn’t look at that ring and imagine himself admitting to Tony that he _can’t try_. 

“You’re right,” Steve said, leaving _sweetheart_ unsaid, again. “It’ll probably be awkward at first, but maybe with time I’ll find the right home for me. Hopefully, I’ll know it when I see it.”

This time, Tony’s smile was unmistakable. Steve felt tension bleed from his posture as he indulged in Tony’s happiness even from a distance. 

“Nobody sees things better than you, Steve,” Tony said with affection warm in his voice. “All you have to do is trust yourself. I do. When you see it, you’ll know the one that’s right for you.”


	22. Day 26: Smiles/Laughter

That May, Steve graduated from Sargent College in the College of Health and Rehabilitation with a Bachelor of Science in Athletic Training. His mother was there to watch him in that sea of scarlet gowns, surrounded by his friends and fellow junior officers. He had so much to be grateful for, and so much to be proud of. He carried his diving medals over the stole recognizing him as student-athlete graduating with honors. Steve and all ROTC cadets wore their dress uniforms under their gowns to mark the occasion, and outwardly signaled their service to their country with red, white, and blue graduation cords. Sam and Carol wore the additional royal blue cords of the Air Force, while Steve and Bucky wore golden cords for the Army. 

His friends, his mother; his education and his service to the university and to the army - everyone who had helped him find his way and achieve his goals were all reflected and honored in some way on his body. Even the man who was not there in person was close to his heart. Under his robes and his dress uniform, kept warm against his skin, Steve wore the gold band that had never met its intended owner. 

They sat for what felt like an eternity, listening to speech after speech, and at some point Steve thought maybe he should pay more attention, but time was moving too fast and too slow all at once. Sitting on those lawn chairs lasted a lifetime, but when it came to walking across the stage, shaking hands with the Dean, and climbing the stairs back down to solid ground, time zipped past him so fast Steve couldn’t even remember how he came to stand on the lawn with a degree in hand and his phone buzzing itself into the stratosphere. 

_> Received from Sweetheart at 10:17: Steve, you did it!! Congratulations!!! _  
_> Received from Sweetheart at 10:17: Could you fit more shit around your neck? You’re putting everyone to shame _

Steve blinked at his phone, read the messages over twice, then quickly glanced up at the crowd milling around him. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but even as he tried to find Tony, something in his stomach curdled. 

It wasn’t the same anymore. The idea of seeing Tony again after so long wasn’t as straightforward as it once was. Was Steve meant to be happy, as if nothing had happened? Steve hadn’t seen Tony since August of the previous year when Tony had dumped him, and now Tony had invited himself to Steve’s graduation without warning? 

The fucking nerve. 

Steve set his jaw and tried to shrug it all off - his sudden irritation with Tony, the unexpected interruption to his day. This was meant to be celebrated with his friends and family, the people closest to him. The people Steve could count on. 

Bucky squeezed through the crowd to get to him, pushing against the current of students leaving the stage, and like some laughing madman he charged at Steve and hauled him off his feet with a massive bearhug. 

“WE DID IT!” Bucky shouted with a cheer, and Steve couldn’t help but laugh along as he clung to Bucky’s borderline aggressive hug. “We’re free, we fucking did it! No more textbooks, Stevie! No more bullshit!”

“Put him down, come on!” Sharon told them, and Bucky quickly let go so he and Steve could hurry over to where Carol and Sharon were waiting. 

“Just Sam left?” Steve asked as his phone buzzed in his pocket with a vengeance. It sounded far louder than any other time it vibrated, and his friends gave him odd looks until Steve gave in and checked his phone. 

_> Received from Sweetheart at 10:20: I’m in town for a few days. Let me take you to dinner? _  
_> Received from Sweetheart at 10:21: Can we talk? _

Steve frowned down at the phone again. This felt different. They weren’t at a place where they could talk about anything and everything anymore, not like they had before, but they also didn’t ask for permission before a conversation. This sounded serious. 

“Is that… Stark?” Bucky asked, his voice lowered in disbelief. “He’s—is he here?”

Steve shrugged as he typed out his reply. “Who knows? It’s Tony. All he needs is some drone and he can watch us remotely.”

None of his friends said a word, and chose to turn to each other for conversation after that. They knew better than to talk to him when Steve was in a mood. 

_> You sent at 10:22: Not sure how much time I have, Tony. I have plans. _

_> Received from Sweetheart at 10:22: I can wait_

Beside him, Bucky, Carol, and Sharon applauded and hollered at the top of their voice when Sam’s name was called. Carol’s wolf whistle might have even rattled eardrums. Steve quickly put his phone away to join in the ruckus, and by the time Sam made his way across the stage, accepted his degree, and completed the herd, Steve forgot about Tony’s last text. 

*** 

After the ceremony, they all went their own way. Carol celebrated her graduation with James and her family, and Sam and Sharon bit the bullet and finally introduced their families to each other. 

Bucky’s parents hadn’t been able to take off from work to see him at his graduation, but his baby sister was there, and together with Steve and Sarah, they celebrated the occasion at one of Steve and Bucky’s favorite restaurants in Boston. It was pricier than their usual fare, but if graduation wasn’t special enough, what was? 

While Jenna fawned over the pictures of Sarah’s most recent foster kittens, Bucky leaned closer to Steve and asked, “So, what did Stark want?”

It took Steve a moment to recall Tony’s earlier messages. “He says he wants to talk,” Steve said with a shrug, and he pulled out his phone to check. A new text from Tony had popped up on his lock screen since that morning. 

_> Received from Sweetheart at 10:47: You don’t have to take me back, Steve. I just want to tell you something. _

Steve blinked down at his phone. He had no idea what to say, or what to do. Was he meant to feel excited by the possibility of getting back together? Was he supposed to feel pity? What the hell was Tony trying to achieve with those words? 

Dumbfounded, he showed the text to Bucky. 

Bucky stared at it in silence before finally shaking his head. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? What a dick. Does he think dangling a relationship is going to make you come running back?”

“Maybe? I don’t think he’s that manipulative, though,” Steve admitted, which caught his mother’s attention. 

“Are you talking to that boy Tony again, Steve?” she wondered with impish curiosity. 

“No different than before, ma,” Steve assured her, lest she get excited about a reunion. “We call once, twice a month. He moved to Geneva two months ago, now the time difference is weird. We’re just friends.”

“Doesn’t sound like that’s what he wants,” Bucky pointed out, and Sarah perked up. 

“It’s none of my business, I know, honey,” she quickly said to Steve, who was feeling increasingly uncomfortable by the conversation. Instead, Sarah turned to Bucky with a meaningful look and told him, “Set him straight, James.”

“It’s not my place either, Aunt Sarah,” Bucky said respectfully while glancing between his best friend and the woman who for all intents and purposes was his second mother. 

“Mama always said it’s empowering that relationships can be based on love for us. You’re not stuck with someone because you’re dependent on your partner for money. She always said to love the person who loves you best, and who brings out the best in you,” Jenna said, mostly directing her words at Sarah. Or so Steve thought. He had just dared to breathe a sigh of relief when Jenna turned to him and said, “but she also says, it’s a hell of a lot easier to love people with money.”

“I think you should just go call him, Stevie,” Bucky cut in before either Sarah or Jenna continued that line of thought, and Steve couldn’t agree more. Anything to get out of the conversation. 

“I’ll be right outside,” he promised the table, “just, calling, calling Tony—nobody eat my fries,” he remembered to warn them before running away as calmly as he could. 

The phone rang in his hand for only a few seconds before Tony picked up. 

“Steve, hey!” Tony greeted with a burst of excitement, but then he quickly cleared his throat and pulled himself together in an effort to sound calmer. “I’m, uh. I’m glad you called.”

“I just saw your last text. Sorry I didn’t get back with you earlier, Tony,” Steve replied. It had been long enough that calling him by his name was second nature. “What did you want to talk about?” 

“I, well,” Tony stammered for a moment. “I, I wanted to tell you in person? I—is now a good time? I can pick you up.”

“I’m having dinner with my family, Tony,” Steve replied as calmly as he could. “Now is not a good time.”

Only silence answered him for some time. 

“Tomorrow?” Tony eventually asked in a whisper. “Or, uh. Saturday?”

A part of Steve didn’t want to make it that easy for Tony to become important in his life again. Tony was a good man and an attentive friend, but Steve cared about him too deeply to act casually or treat him platonically in person. Even now, nearly a year after the fact, Steve couldn’t trust himself to put the breaks on if he saw Tony face to face. Tony would only have to smile at him to wrap Steve around his little finger. 

Steve didn’t have the heart to give him that chance again. 

“My mom’s here, Tony. I move back to New York on Sunday, it’s going to be a busy weekend. Can we talk once I’m in New York?” he asked, knowing full well Tony lived in Geneva. 

“Oh,” Tony whispered, audibly taken aback. It took him a moment to continue. “So soon? It’s, um. Can I help?”

“Thanks, but I have enough friends helping me, Tony,” Steve replied, doing his best to stick to the facts. “If next week is bad, I can call you? Cliff wants to take me to dinner my first day, but I’ll be home by six. I know that’s late for you, but I can call Tuesday at lunch—”

In a rare show of urgency, Tony rushed to interrupt him. “No, no, it won’t be too late, I’ll stay. I can be in New York. Can I take you to dinner on Monday?” 

If he thought long enough, maybe Steve could have thought of a plausible excuse. When he was honest with himself, he knew he wasn’t ready to be friends with Tony yet. One look at him, and Steve would be right back to that summer day he stood on his stoop in New York, listening to Tony say they were done. He’d beg for Tony to explain, to reconsider. What problem could they not overcome together? 

But Tony wasn’t the convenient type of genius who was socially unaware; too many excuses, and he would see right through Steve’s avoidance. A vindictive thought slithered through his mind, pushing Steve to accept that it could be that easy. Give him enough excuses, and Tony would do the dirty work for him. Leave the crumbs out, and once Tony understood he was no longer welcome, Tony would pull away on his own. And at the end of the day, who could blame Steve for protecting himself? 

It was a perfect way to separate himself from Tony once and for all without hurting Tony any further. They could both move on with their lives. Maybe Steve would finally try Grindr. 

“Alright, Tony. Dinner on Monday,” Steve said instead. “I’ll be ready by seven.”

Down the line, he heard Tony take a deep breath. “Seven is good—seven is _great_ ,” he rushed to say. “Steve, I’ll—thank you, Steve. Thank you, I can’t wait to see you on Monday.”

Steve paused, at a loss for words. There was no right way to say goodbye. “I have to get back to dinner, Tony. Enjoy your weekend.” 

***

The weekend passed in a blur. Steve moved back into the old two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn that he and his mom moved into after his father left. Everything important in his childhood had happened under that roof. He came out to his mom in his childhood room; she kept him and Bucky company every day at the kitchen table while they did their homework. He’d walked in through the door with his head held high and gold medals around his neck from state and national competitions, and sat and sobbed against the same door the first time he thought he had a boyfriend, but was told wasn’t a good enough kisser. 

After all this time, all of his memories were still there, but they were strangely out of reach. Steve knew every piece of the apartment, from the shade of the mismatched wallpapers, to the hairline cracks in the kitchen floor tiles, but it somehow wasn’t his home anymore. Even his childhood room, now cramped with all of his boxes and bags from college, felt strange to him. He lost his virginity in that bed, and now he slept in it as a working adult. 

_A working adult_. The idea was somehow more daunting than it was exciting, even though the clinic he was hired by consisted mostly of supportive, warm people he got along with easily. The work itself was laid back and meaningful. He would have the chance to assist with a great variety of patients, from student athletes working through injuries, to victims of car accidents, and seniors struggling with their loss of flexibility. Earlier that day, Steve had been given the chance to work with a young woman who was recovering from a bad fall. For 90 minutes, they chatted and laughed while Steve helped her with her range of motion and flexibility. 

If circumstances had been different, Steve would only look forward to telling Tony all about his first day over dinner. Instead, he was stuck staring into his wardrobe dreading what to wear. Tony always loved him in blue, and he was very partial to green or black. Blue would look like Steve was trying too hard, like he purposefully wanted to peacock for Tony. 

Of all the problems to have before seeing your ex for the first time in ten months, what to wear shouldn’t be one of them. In the end, he pushed past all the _what if_ ’s and the _but Tony thinks_ ’s and settled on black. 

*** 

Tony was waiting outside of the restaurant when Steve arrived. He wasn’t on his phone, or on a call, or off in his own world solving the impossible. He just stood on the sidewalk, though he couldn’t seem to stand still. Tony shifted his weight on his feet restlessly, even bouncing a little on the balls of his feet; his fingers were tightly wound together, and even in the short time it took Steve to walk up to him, Tony couldn’t seem to decide if he wanted to keep his hands behind his back, or shoved deep into his pockets. 

Steve stood and stared for a moment, trying to figure out what had happened to Tony in their time apart. Even with his jacket on, it was clear to Steve that Tony had become leaner. The leather hugged Tony’s biceps and forearms in a way it hadn’t in the past, but it hung loose around his waist. Steve just couldn’t tell if it was the healthy effect of increased activity, or the unhealthy habit of skipping meals. Knowing Tony, Steve worried it was the worse combination of both. 

With a bitter inward sigh, Steve reminded himself that it wasn’t his place to notice anymore. He steeled himself for their intended meeting and announced himself with a simple, “Hey, Tony.” 

Tony spun around to face him with a beaming smile, until he must have realized it wasn’t appropriate. Steve watched as Tony ducked his head for just a moment under the guise of rubbing his nose, then looked up at Steve with a more contained expression. 

“Hey Steve,” he said, swaying a little on his feet before moving closer. Steve didn’t have the heart to offer a handshake, and he didn’t have the emotional buffer to offer a hug, and Tony’s nervous energy only worsened without a clear invitation. 

Tony kept his hands to himself in the end, and did his best to keep smiling at Steve. “Thank, um. Thank you, I know it’s a busy day, and—”

“Don’t mention it,” Steve said to interrupt Tony’s nervous ramble before it got too far or embarrassing for either of them. “You came all the way down to Brooklyn for pizza?”

“I, uh,” Tony glanced back over his shoulder at the Emily sign, then quickly turned back to Steve to say, “burgers, actually. A burger, singular. Have you had the Emmy burger?”

“I haven’t,” Steve said honestly, and Tony’s face warmed with excitement, thrilled as he always was to introduce Steve to something new. 

“I hope you’re hungry,” Tony said and pulled the door open to let Steve in first. The hostess didn’t even ask for names or a reservation once Tony walked in, and simply asked them to follow her. 

It was a small, intimate space, but that meant they didn’t have booths or corners to hide in. Instead, the hostess hid them in plain sight in the corner seat at the window where Tony could sit with his back to the wall and remain unseen by pedestrians and other patrons entering the restaurant. 

Their server was immediately there with their waters, and Steve ordered the same burger Tony was there to eat. It almost felt like a normal dinner with a friend, until the server left and they were left together in their silence. 

They sat uncomfortably in the awkward interim between ordering and conversation, fidgeting with their menus and pretending to look at them instead of each other. 

“You wanted to tell me something?” Steve finally dared to say at the same time as Tony asked, “How was your first day?” 

Tony opened his mouth immediately, and, unbidden, Steve’s memory conjured the visceral memory of Tony laughing ‘you first!’ back at him. But in the present, Tony’s nervous energy evaporated, and right before Steve’s eyes, Tony’s whole facade and confidence deflated. With his head hung low, Tony nodded in understanding.

“Right,” Tony mumbled quietly, clearing his throat and rubbing the back of his neck before catching himself and putting both his hands flat on the table. He took a moment before looking at Steve and saying, “Do you remember Howard’s arc reactor?”

“I do.”

Tony stalled for a moment then quietly said, “I started working on it, eight months ago. I’ve been trying to make it smaller, you know? It’s clean energy, sustainable over generations, and I got it down to about the size of a car battery. Good, not great, so—”

He paused abruptly as the server returned with their food and drinks, and they both thanked him and waited for him to leave before resuming their conversation. Steve stared at him like Tony had casually shrugged off the cure for climate change. 

“Not great? If that’s not great, what is?”

“I know it can be smaller. I was almost there, I could feel it, I could see it in the math—I could see it, but I couldn’t do it. I’d pushed it as far as I could bringing quantum mechanics and relativity together, but it wasn’t enough. Of course, I couldn’t show Howard, it’s too easy to weaponize. So, I reached out to CERN. They invited me to try again at their facilities, and I took my prototype with me. That was two months ago,” Tony finished with a quiet voice, then he reached into his back pocket to pull out his phone. Without a word, he laid it on the table between them and nudged it closer to Steve. 

It was slimmer than any phone Steve had seen, and if he hadn’t known any better, he’d never think it was more than a piece of polished obsidian. But apart from how slim it was, Steve couldn’t see anything unusual about it. When he looked up at Tony for an explanation, Tony flipped the phone over and slipped off the backing that covered the battery. 

From out of the pitch black phone shone a brilliant, blue light Steve recognized in a heartbeat. Instinctively, Steve rushed to cup his hands around the phone to shield it from curious eyes that would inevitably notice such a bright spark in the cozy, romantic restaurant. 

“That’s—that’s the fucking—you fit the _arc reactor in a phone?_ ” 

“That prototype has enough power to light up a city block for a month,” Tony whispered in an excited rush, leaning in closer in a way that made Steve’s heart ache with the memory of their time together. “It’s the only one I brought with me, everything else is back in Geneva. Steve, this is it,” Tony confided in him with a smile so bright, and so warm with passion, that it could sustain Steve’s heart for a month. 

“This is proof of a theory that begins to tell us about how quantum mechanics and relativity can work together; it is the first step in understanding how infinite power can exist on a nanoscale. This is the future.”

“This is,” Steve began, but he couldn’t find any words to say. _'Shocking, but not from you'_? _'Only a fraction of your potential'_? “Beyond words,” he finally settled on. “I, I couldn’t be more excited for you, Tony. But why did you want to show it to me?”

The question caught Tony off guard, and for a second his eyelashes fluttered as he tried to process the turn in conversation. His excitement didn’t fade so much as sober, and he nodded to himself and to Steve as he closed up his phone and put it away. 

“Right, sure. Pepper - you remember Pepper? You’d like her, Steve, she’s, she’s a force of nature. Pepper noticed early on that… maybe the women and the, the partying didn’t work for me. She’s perceptive like that. She didn’t bring it up, until my mother stopped by around Christmas last year for lunch. She, she has this way of talking that just, I don’t know, works? So, we talked, I told her what was going on, and then… then she asked the simplest question,” Tony said with a thoughtful, marveling smile on his lips. “She asked me why I don’t start my own company and hire anyone Howard fires. And I… Steve, I don’t—it had never occured to me, you don’t—”

Steve shook his head and raised a hand to get Tony’s attention. Tony snapped his mouth shut and gave Steve all his attention. “I think I missed a step, Tony,” Steve told him. “What problem would you solve by starting your own company?”

Tony frowned a little at the question, like he had never expected Steve to say those words. “The, the reason we broke up,” Tony said in quiet disbelief. Steve couldn’t blame him; he’d be shocked about forgetting the reason they broke up, too, if he’d ever heard a damn reason. 

“Tony, you didn’t give me a reason,” Steve told him with a low, impatient snap in his voice. “You told me your mom was worried, and that was _it_.”

“No, of course I told you a—my mother told me if I didn’t appease investors, if I didn’t, if I wasn’t like Howard, they would invest elsewhere. They don’t want the handoff to rock the boat. Without their investment, tens of thousands of families would be out of an income.”

It was too much. It felt like being dumped all over again, only with more indignant anger and more frustrations. He wanted to scream at Tony; he wanted to cut his losses and walk away. 

“You broke up with me,” Steve said slowly, still reeling from the nausea of understanding. “Because in ten to twenty years, investors might change their minds, and some people might lose their jobs?” 

For reasons Steve couldn’t begin to guess at, Tony’s face had grown pale, and he fidgeted in his discomfort. He nodded in the affirmative. 

“People who would be given severance packages,” Steve continued through gritted teeth. “Tony, these might not even be the same investors that you deal with when the hand-off happens; they might even _like_ a new direction for the company, did you ever think of—”

“No, Steve! I didn’t think, okay? Is that what you want to hear?” Tony snapped, drawing the attention of a couple a few feet away from them. Steve glared at their curious looks, and they quickly remembered to mind their own business. 

“The most important, difficult fucking decision of my miserable life, you don’t think I thought about it?” Tony all but hissed, trying to speak quietly even when he couldn’t contain his heartache. “I just—I couldn’t do it, Steve. I, the risk? What’s my fucking life compared to thousands?”

“ _Our_ lives,” Steve reminded him, softly. He could feel the knot of tears hot and heavy in his throat, but he gritted his teeth against the tears and pushed through. If Tony wanted to talk, he was damn well going to give Steve some answers. 

“You made that decision for both of us. Why didn’t you talk to me? Rhodes said you’d known about it for months, why—you never treated me like I was dumb or incapable, so why this? Why was I not qualified to be a part of this decision, Tony?” Steve demanded—begged—to know. “There was nothing we couldn’t do, if we worked together.”

“I couldn’t,” Tony struggled to say, and he glanced around them surreptitiously, clearly trying to gauge how many might be eavesdropping on their private conversation. “Steve, I couldn’t see a way out. I was selfish, I wanted every second with you to, to be perfect. Just us. I thought—”

“You thought it was okay if I shared my problems with you when I needed help, but you couldn’t do the same for me,” Steve finished for him. “That’s what you’re saying, Tony.”

Tony pressed his lips together, visibly containing his instinctive reply from spilling out. It took him a moment, but eventually he nodded in understanding. “I see that now,” Tony replied, speaking so quietly Steve nearly missed his answer. “I was wrong. Steve, I was so wrong, I, I fucked up and I hurt you in the process. I can’t change what’s in the past,” he acknowledged in the end. “But, Steve, I’m telling you. I’ve been trying, I’ve—I’m leaving Stark Industries, Steve. I’m getting out of weapons manufacturing. Renewable, sustainable energy. I can’t promise I won’t fuck up again, or that I’m worth another chance, or. I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore,” he mumbled with a frown to himself, ducking his head as his confidence flagged. “I just know that I fucked up, I lost the best thing that’s ever happened to me, the best person I’ve ever known, and it was for what? Making better bombs?”

Tony looked like he had more on his mind, but with those words, the wind knocked out of his sails. 

“I’m still here, Tony,” Steve heard himself say. Tony’s gaze snapped back up to Steve with a strictly focused attention to hang on his every word. “We can be friends, I think. I, I just need time. To adjust. This hasn’t been easy.”

Tony looked down at his cold, untouched burger and his chin jerked in acknowledgement. He sat absolutely still, then cautiously asked, “Just friends?”

Steve would burn in hell for this some day, he just knew it. How badly did he want to go along with it and try again? Tony had explained himself, he had apologized. What more could Steve ask of him? Tony was making it so easy. 

“I can’t do this with you again, Tony,” Steve still managed to say, keeping his tone gentle. “You didn’t trust me. You weren’t honest. I asked you, Tony, so many times. I asked you to tell me what was wrong; I knew something was wrong, and you denied it. To my face. You told me it was your defense, or Dum-E. You lied to me because you decided I couldn’t help you,” Steve finished, pulling all of his frustrations into one sentence. “You didn’t even give me a chance.”

Tony opened his mouth, but no words came out. Again, he tried, and he failed. Finally, he shook his head, then nodded, he mumbled his agreement. 

“What were you going to say, Tony?” 

When Tony only shook his head and tried to brush it off, Steve pushed back a little and gently asked, “What’ve you got to lose?”

“Your friendship,” Tony replied, without a second’s hesitation. “Your respect.” 

“Try me.”

Tony took a deep breath, then slowly let it out through his nose. “I don’t mean to blame my actions on others. This was my fault, I know that. I can only promise that there is nothing and nobody that could make me make that mistake again. I don’t know how to prove it to you without a chance to show you, except to say, on Rhodey’s life, I will not keep important things from you again.”

“...on Rhodey’s life?”

Tony pursed his lips and shrugged one shoulder. “You’ve met my mother.”

Steve tried to resist the urge to smile. “Fair enough,” he said once he’d gotten his face under control. “When do you go back to Geneva?”

Tony let out a breath he’d been holding and tried to muster a smile. “I guess tomorrow.”

“You guess? Oh,” Steve realized just as he said it. “Your jet.”

“No, I don’t have a jet anymore. It was Howard’s jet,” Tony said with a wry expression. “I’m… between homes at the moment. I—you just started your job here and I thought, you know. If there was a chance, I’d find a place here. But, maybe LA? I’ve heard it’s nice, it’s sunny. Geneva’s… it rains, a lot. It, um,” his voice grew quieter with every word, until he finally lost his voice and looked down at his hands. He gave himself a shake, took a deep breath, and looked back at Steve. “Okay, no. I can’t do this right now. I’ll just go pay.”

Without thinking, Steve got to his feet as soon as Tony started getting up. He reached for his wallet and dug out what looked like five twenties for the table. Before Tony could disagree, he was following Steve out the door into fresh air. 

“You didn’t have to pay,” was all Tony managed to say as he adjusted his long-sleeved t-shirt and pulled his jacket on again. Steve meant to interrupt him, but something familiar around Tony’s neck caught the light just right and suddenly, Steve couldn’t stop staring. 

The right thing would have been to ask Tony for permission to touch him, but Steve didn’t have the presence of mind to form coherent sentences. Like a man possessed, he gently reached under the collar of Tony’s shirt to fish out that familiar ball chain. He ran it over his finger, until his own dog tags fell into his palm. 

Steve looked at Tony in his genuine surprise, half expecting him to look embarrassed or guilty. Tony wasn’t either, though even in the street light, Steve could see him blushing. 

“You still wear it?”

“It makes me happy,” Tony replied, like it was the simplest question in the world. “It reminds me of you.”

Steve closed his fist around his old dog tags. 

He was too close to let go. 

Gently, he put pressure on the chain. Tony followed his lead until they stood toe to toe and shared the same air. Steve only needed to lean his head forward to rest his forehead against Tony’s. 

“You have apologized. You’ve explained what happened. You’ve made meaningful changes in your life,” Steve listed, making a sincere effort to speak slowly and calmly, but he couldn’t ease his grip of his dog tags. “Sweetheart, there is nothing else I could ask of you. God help me, but I still love you, Tony. I think I always will. I only need you to promise me you won’t keep anything about your health or our relationship from me again.”

Tony looked up at him, wide-eyed. Tears were bright in his eyes, but his lips curved up with a hopeful smile of disbelief. He didn’t move or speak for so long Steve assumed Tony had mistaken his words as a hallucination, and he was just about to say something when Tony touched his forehead to Steve’s. 

“I never thought I’d hear you call me that again,” Tony whispered, his words warm with affection but catching on a sob that threatened to overtake him. “I love you, too, Steve, and I promise I will never leave you in the dark again.”


	23. Day 27: Against a wall *

They made it back to Steve’s (Sarah’s) apartment without too much time spent ducking into allies to kiss each other breathless, going the wrong way because they were too busy walking without paying attention, or pretending they were respectable people when they inevitably had to take the subway back. Steve unlocked the door and reminded Tony to be quiet since his mom was asleep before letting Tony in ahead of him. 

Sarah had a sixth sense about movement or light in her apartment, so Steve lit their way with the flashlight from his phone. They grabbed two bottles of water out of the fridge, then made their way to Steve’s room on their tiptoes. 

It wasn’t possible to walk into Steve’s room without knocking your knees into some big, so Tony stood as close to the doorway as he could until Steve could slip in, too, then turn on the light. 

His room was a disaster. 

“You know, I’m staying in a hotel suite,” Tony whispered while he watched Steve pick his way through the debris moving boxes here and there to open up the floor. “It overlooks Central Park. King bed. Turn down service, breakfast—”

“I have work in the morning, Tony. Everything I need to get ready is here.”

Even with his back turned, Steve could practically feel Tony rolling his eyes as he muttered, “But can you find it?”

Steve stacked two smaller boxes on top of a big box in the corner with his books, then turned to give Tony a wry, long-suffering look. “I told you it was a mess. I can call you a cab if you—”

“No! No,” Tony rushed to say, and before Steve had a chance to answer him, he dug out a new toothbrush from the bag of necessities they’d picked up from Walgreens on their way back. “Bathroom?”

“Two doors down to the right,” Steve told him, “oh, and mind your step: the bathroom’s floor is an inch lower than the rest of the house.”

Tony gave him an odd look, but whatever he was thinking, he kept to himself. Steve watched him go, and it wasn’t until Tony was out of sight that Steve’s smile dropped from his face and panic took over. 

What had he been thinking, inviting Tony back to the apartment? His room was a mess, but worse than that, _he_ was a mess. Diving had ended weeks before graduation, and between finals and being miserably lonely, Steve hadn’t groomed from the neck down for almost two months. Even if Tony understood that he was less than perfectly hairless now, he probably wouldn’t expect the amount of body hair hiding under Steve’s clothes now. After all, his chest hair didn’t end at his pecs, it dusted over his torso and abdomen, and _Christ_. It only got worse from there. 

In a vain attempt to dig up clothes he could arguably sleep in, Steve dug through his drawers for clothes Tony might plausibly believe Steve wore to bed. Steve, who ran so hot he kept a stash of clean boxers next to his pillow in the dorm so he could sleep naked and pull on a new pair before getting up. 

Steve had no time to waste. He rushed to pull his sweater off while kicking off his jeans, stepped out of his boxers to pull on a fresh pair, and finally clawed his way into his t-shirt. Already it felt too small and confining, but one night of bad sleep next to Tony was worth it. He’d find a waxing place, maybe even squeeze it in on his lunch hour, he—

“Steve? Are you okay?”

Steve jumped out of his skin and clutched at his heart. When his eyes focused on Tony, Tony was standing right in front of him, reaching for Steve’s hands. Steve reached back for him with unsteady hands, and Tony frowned in his concern. 

“Is this,” he whispered, a frown of confusion on his face. “Steve, if this is too soon, I don’t—”

“No! No,” Steve hurried to assure him even though waiting one more night would make him feel infinitely more comfortable. “Not too soon. If no sex, that’s fine, maybe not the best way to wake mom up, really, and, I don’t know. One more night wouldn’t kill me, but I’ve missed you. I don’t want to twist your arm, but I… I really miss having you next to me.”

Tony sniffed softly to himself, ducking his head to hide his face against Steve’s shoulder. Steve did him the courtesy of pretending not to see him blush. 

“I miss you, too,” Tony whispered as Steve wound his arms around him. 

Steve pressed a kiss to Tony’s neck, then nuzzled into his hair for a moment to breathe Tony’s scent in deeply. His knees almost buckled for the faint woodsy, citrusy smell of him that Steve could have recognized anywhere, and he stood there, indulging in the miracle of having Tony in his arms again and finding his calm in slow, deep breaths. 

Tony rubbed his palms over Steve’s back in big, soothing circles. “Come on, Steve. Let’s get in bed.”

“Teeth,” Steve murmured, already half asleep on his feet. Tony chuckled quietly, but he obliged Steve with a gentle pat on his back. 

“Go on, babe,” he said with a playful tone. “I’ll be waiting for you in your bed.”

And just like that, something more pressing than sleeping stirred in Steve’s body. Before Tony noticed, he pulled away and promised to be back soon. He straddled the rim of the cold, porcelain tub and counted backwards from fifty while he brushed his teeth, but neither attempt did much to cool him off. 

In the end, Steve gave up and returned to his room. After all, if there was one thing that Tony shouldn’t be surprised by, it would be Steve’s overeager cock. 

Tony had found Steve’s bedside lamp, and left that on as the only light in the room. Steve picked his way through the obstacle course that was his room, then crawled under the sheets where Tony was still awake, waiting for him. While the double bed was bigger than his twin back in their dorms, they shared it with a large stack of clothes Steve hadn’t known what to do with after his move. There were only so many free t-shirts and sweats a man could use in a lifetime. And what was he ever supposed to do with graduation robes? A Halloween costume? 

Steve was so busy trying to get under the covers without Tony noticing how hairy his arms and legs were that he didn’t realize Tony’d been fiddling with Steve’s stole. 

“I wish we had a picture together with you in this,” Tony confessed, and Steve cuddled in closer against Tony’s side to nuzzle into the smooth, warm skin of Tony’s neck. His reaction to Steve’s two-day scruff scraping over his skin was immediate. Steve heard his gasp before Tony squirmed and shuddered involuntarily in his arms. 

If Steve didn’t have a problem before, he certainly had one now. 

From the bank of responses to his cock, Tony’s look of grateful relief was a first. He rolled onto his side to face Steve, and gently cupped Steve’s face before pressing closer to kiss him. It was a slow, passionate kiss, nothing fervent or urgent, but eager in their reacquaintance. 

When they parted for breath, Steve could still feel Tony mouth against his, his lips curled up in a smile. 

Tony leaned up on an elbow, and with a gentle touch, stroked Steve’s stubbly jaw while he spoke. “You know,” he whispered, still panting softly as he caught his breath. “Between you and me, I wasn’t sure you’d still… you know. Want me like you did before. I don’t really look the same.”

“Hey, stop that,” Steve whispered. “Health first, happy second, looks last. Okay?”

Tony pursed his lips in a clear effort not to pout. “Easy for you to say,” he muttered mutinously. “You’re even better now, your muscles have new muscles _and_ you can grow a full beard? Mine comes in patchy still, like I’m fourteen or something—”

Steve gently pressed two fingers over Tony’s lips to interrupt his self-deprecating ramble. “Okay, two things. First, with eyes like yours, you don’t need to worry about anything on your face,” Steve told him, and if he hadn’t been so wound up about his second point, he would have kissed Tony silly for the way his eyes grew wide in surprise. Did Steve really not compliment him often enough? He would need to be better. 

“Second,” Steve pushed on, doing his best to keep a straight face. “Tony, I’m all hair. If anyone should be worried, it’s me—like, we’re lucky it’s not coming out of my ears yet, but fair warning, it’ll probably happen in a few years time, okay? I didn’t think about grooming cause I never thought you’d… uh,” Steve gave Tony a bashful smile he hoped conveyed ‘come to bed with me,’ but instead he said, “Catch me looking like a hairball.”

Tony openly stared at him. “Looking like a what?”

“You heard me the first time, you jerk,” Steve rumbled to Tony’s giggling delight. “Don’t laugh! I’ll go get cleaned up tomorrow—”

“Now who’s making decisions for whom!” Tony cried with mock outrage, and Steve gave him an unimpressed look. Tony mirrored it back at him, and tugged on Steve’s t-shirt. “Is that why you’re mysteriously overdressed for bed? Show me.”

“What? No,” Steve said instinctively, but Tony continued tugging at his shirt and blinking big, puppy-dog eyes at him until Steve grunted his frustration and yielded. “Fine. Just remember you asked for this.”

Tony laughed and sat up next to him, pushing the blankets away so Steve couldn’t hide behind anything. But before Steve had a chance to take his t-shirt off, Tony smacked Steve’s knee and demanded, “Turn on the light! I want to see you, babe. Who does a sexy reveal in the dark?” 

Steve obliged him, even as he rolled his eyes and grumbled to himself about how they clearly differed vastly in their definition of what was sexy. “There, happy?” Steve asked rhetorically as the bedside lamp cast a spotlight on them, and then, before he chickened out, Steve reached over his head to pull the shirt off. 

This time, when Tony stared at him, he was neither incredulous, or on the verge of giggling. He stared in shock, and in open admiration. His positive reaction sustained Steve for some time, but as Tony’s silence dragged on, Steve started to feel less like a partner, and more like an object on display. 

“Still processing,” Tony murmured, then cautiously reached to smooth his fingers over the curve of Steve’s left pec, tracing its firm but obscured contour over his chest hair. 

“How come I never knew,” Tony wondered out loud, then pressed more firmly against Steve’s chest to push him down onto his back. “Lie back, let me look at you.”

Confused but obliging, Steve eased back on his back, and at Tony’s gentle urging, he lifted one arm and curled it under his pillow. Tony sat back then and looked his fill, gently running his fingers over the plentiful hair covering Steve’s chest, and then down over his abdomen where it thinned out before darkening again over his groin. 

“I vote against waxing,” Tony finally whispered, his words pregnant with a soft, needful moan. “Trim, contour, sure; I even know a guy. Nobody has a body like yours. But this,” he said, scraping blunt nails through the hair over Steve’s abdomen. “You don’t understand how fucking hot you are.”

Steve had barely understood Tony’s words before Tony started tugging on the waistband of his boxers. Steve lifted his hips without a second thought, helping Tony pull his underwear down and off his legs, leaving his straining, hard cock exposed. 

Like a moth to the flame, Tony wrapped his fist around Steve’s thick cock and immediately began stroking him from root to tip, wetting his palm with Steve’s precome to help lubricate his touch. 

“For our first date back together,” Tony whispered softly, “let’s go to the clinic tomorrow. Have every fucking test so _those_ can be the last boxes of condoms we ever buy,” he said, giving the Walgreens bag an venomous look. 

“Sweetheart, I think we’re going to need more tha— _ohh_ ,” Steve jolted in bed and his back arched with one sudden, firm flick of Tony’s wrist over the tip of his cock. 

Without taking his hand off Steve’s cock, Tony leaned over Steve’s body to whispered in his ear. “Fuck me, Steve. I haven’t been with another man, and I want it bad, I want you to fuck me so bad it hurts,” Tony softly moaned. “Can you make it hurt, Steve? So I remember your cock inside me tomorrow while you’re at work, until you can come home and fuck me again?”

“Don’t ask me to hurt you,” Steve whimpered, his hips thrusting up to meet Tony’s tight fist involuntarily. “Please, Tony.”

“Your choice tomorrow, baby, but I need this from you, I need you right now,” Tony said and soothed him with slow, tender kisses. What little resistance Steve had melted away with every sweet slide of their lips, and he slid his hand up Tony’s thigh to gently cup the curve of his ass. While Steve squeezed his handful of Tony’s ass more deliberately, exploring this new landscape of Tony’s body, Tony busied himself with liberating a condom from one of their new packs. 

Beautiful as it had looked in jeans only hours earlier, something wasn’t quite the same. Tony’s ass felt firm and round to the touch, but the soft, ample cushion Steve had so often indulged in spanking or biting wasn’t as prominent anymore as the strong muscles Tony had no doubt developed from physical work. 

Steve pulled away from the kiss abruptly. “Clinic, then dinner. Lots of it—” he cut off with sudden inhale as Tony rolled the condom over Steve’s cock with a triumphant smirk. But this time, Steve didn’t let it go as easily. 

“Sweetheart, promise me.”

“Playing dirty now, are we?” Tony teased in a growl as he straddled Steve’s hips. “Fuck me—use me like you used to, and I’ll do anything you want me to tomorrow.”

Steve sat up, strong enough to sit up even with Tony leaning over him. He gathered Tony up in his arms then turned him so Tony faced away from him on his hands and knees. With one hand planted between Tony’s shoulder blades to push his face down into the mattress, Steve pinned him in place so he could take his time taking stock of Tony’s ass. He sucked on his thumb until it came away wet with his spit, and with no other lubrication, Steve pressed his thumb into Tony, going slowly and with care. 

Tony’s ass put up more of a resistance than Steve remembered. His words about not being fucked in all their time apart came back to him, and Steve quickly reached for the extra bottle of lube they had picked up on their way home. 

“Steve, hurry up or I’m going to get loud—”

“Pipe down,” Steve growled at him, rubbing the lube warm on his fingers. “Mom’s never caught me before, she’s not catching me now. Do you need a sock?”

With his head still pressed into the mattress, Tony side-eyed Steve with a flash of teeth and a promise of rebellion. “I can take it, Steve,” Tony whined, pressing his hips back for Steve, but the next time he opened his mouth, Steve pushed two fingers into him without added prep or stretching, taking pleasure in the way Tony’s jaw went slack with the first taste of pain and pleasure. 

A long, soft moan escaped Tony’s lips as Steve started finger fucking him to spread more and more lube inside him, until he was fisting the bedsheets. “Sock!” he gasped the first time Steve grazed by his prostate, “sock, sock sock sock, can’t—”

“Bite the comforter,” Steve told him, fucking him steadily and spreading his two fingers as much as he could once or twice more before his patience ran out. It would be good enough, and if Tony wanted to feel it, Steve would make sure he felt it. 

Steve stood up and without so much as a pause, he lifted Tony into his arms, holding him so Tony could wrap his legs around his waist. Steve got a firm grip of his waist and held Tony close as he turned them around and walked them to the nearest wall. His hard cock pressed against the cleft of Tony’s ass, and clearly unable to resist the urge, Tony reached behind his back to stroke Steve’s cock as much as he could reach him. 

Tony’s eager hand didn’t help Steve’s insane challenge of trying to make no noise as he stumbled around the debris littering his room, while carrying Tony’s uncooperative weight. As if stroking Steve’s erection while they walked wasn’t bad enough, Tony rolled his hips up against Steve’s body, seeking the friction of his firm abdomen and unfamiliar body hair. 

In the absence of the comforter that absorbed his sounds, Tony tried to muffle the deep, needful moans spilling from his lips by gritting his teeth or biting his bottom lip. Steve paused mid-step when he first noticed, and bracing Tony’s weight with one arm, he freed his other hand to cup the back of Tony’s head, and turning Tony’s head closer so Steve could reach him for a kiss. 

But instead of kissing Tony, Steve laved his tongue over his lips. Tony gasped and his eyes opened wide in his surprise, and Steve used the momentary silence to his advantage by ramming Tony against the wall. His hand behind Tony’s head braced the impact, and held him in place so Steve could swallow Tony’s guttural cry of excitement with a deep, hungry kiss. 

With Tony pinned and his weight partially braced against the wall, Steve had a moment to switch his grip, looping both arms under Tony’s thighs. He let one of Tony’s leg hang over his arm to the side, but he pushed the other up over his shoulder, leaving Tony in a natural spread. 

“Open your eyes,” Steve urged him in a whisper, punctuating his demand by grinding his hips up against Tony’s so Tony could feel his hard cock pushing and pulling between his cheeks. Tony’s lashes fluttered and he bit into his lip again in a vainful effort to stay quiet, but finally he opened his eyes. 

It took Tony a moment to focus on Steve’s gaze, but when Steve finally saw Tony’s attention on him, and he could see the understanding in Tony’s eyes, Steve lined his cock up with Tony’s hole and plowed into him, burying himself to the hilt. Try as he might, Tony couldn’t maintain eye contact, and Steve watched from only inches away how Tony’s eyes rolled back and his head thumped back against the wall. 

Steve wasted no time. It wasn’t a position he could hold forever, and it was only a matter of time before Tony’s breathless mewling grew into heedless cries of ecstasy. With quick, aggressive snaps of his hips, Steve fucked into Tony with brutal abandon. Distantly, he felt Tony clawing at his shoulders and breathlessly crying Steve’s name, and in that moment Steve recognized that the sound of Tony’s shrill, desperate voice crying his name as he neared orgasm was the most beautiful he had heard. Hearing the man he had loved for so long teetering on the edge gave Steve the strength to step away from the wall and cradle Tony’s body tightly against his own as he pound into him viciously. The force of gravity bore Tony down on Steve’s cock over and over again, impaling himself with the weight of his own body. 

Steve could feel Tony’s body seize around his cock as his orgasm consumed him, and before he dropped them, Steve all but threw them back into bed, pinning Tony to the mattress with own body as he kept pounded into him, fucking Tony through his orgasm. Soon, Tony’s guttural moans and eager rolls of his hips turned into stuttering whimpers and shudders of discomfort. Steve recognized the signs of overstimulation, but the way Tony’s muscles continued to clutch and contract around his cock was inadvertently pushing Steve to the point of no return, and although he knew it might be hurting Tony, it was so easy to listen to the way Tony cooed and moaned around Steve’s earlobe to keep fucking him, not to stop, to use his body. The strong, controlled snaps of Steve’s hips turned an erratic, desperate rut as he chased his own release in Tony. 

Tony dug in and scraped his blunt nails over Steve’s meaty ass, and between that and the warm, wet suction on his ear, Steve buried himself deep in Tony and came hard. Tony moaned softly in hoarse triumph as he squeezed his thighs around Steve’s body, not letting him pull away as Steve’s hips worked haplessly, fucking Tony through the last throes of his orgasm. 

“That’s it, baby. Easy,” Tony purred, his legs still stubbornly locked around Steve’s hips and he rubbed his hands across Steve’s shoulders in absent, soothing gestures as Steve came down from his high. Steve eased his weight down on top of Tony, taking comfort in his affection and gentle touch. 

“Pretty sure we woke your mom, but it was worth it.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Steve grunted between panting breaths, and he could feel Tony’s answering laugh vibrating against his chest. He moaned plaintively, pressing sloppy, lingering kisses across Tony’s chest as he nosed his way to the elegant, unblemished column of Tony’s neck. 

Tony whined as Steve’s softening cock gave a valiant twitch of interest, and he cradled Steve’s head in his hands and played with his hair while Steve sucked a dark bruise into Tony’s skin. 

When Steve finally pulled away to admire his work, Tony traced his spit-slick, swollen lips with his finger tips. 

“Don’t bother unpacking, Steve. I’m finding us a place tomorrow,” Tony whispered, his voice already sounding hoarse from overuse. “By Friday, we’ll christen the hell out of it.”


	24. Day 28: Humiliation

They moved in together days after deciding to give their relationship another try. Technically, it had started out as Tony’s apartment - except Steve had picked it out of three choices Tony liked equally, and Steve’s name was right next to Tony’s on all the papers that mattered. It was a two-storey penthouse apartment in Hell’s Kitchen built at the turn of the century, and what it didn’t have in view or fancy facades, it made up for in design. Steve had fallen for the privacy and the Spanish tiles, and Tony was glad they couldn’t see Stark Tower from any window. It hadn’t even been unreasonably priced, and Steve had offered to pay his half of the monthly cost, except there were none. Tony sold an original Goya from his private collection and paid off the apartment outright. 

Apart from the rare occasions of having friends over, Steve and Tony rarely spent time together on the first floor. There was their living room, dining room, kitchen, and two guest rooms in case friends needed to crash. The second floor was entirely dedicated to their bedroom, and much like their reluctance to be downstairs together, they rarely lingered in their bedroom alone. So even though Steve left for work well before Tony ever wanted to crawl out of bed, Tony usually trailed after Steve to doze in the guest room downstairs while Steve made breakfast. They spent those mornings in silence, with Tony napping in the guest bed while Steve sat at the desk in the guestroom and enjoyed his breakfast. 

Steve worked the same hours every day, six to three. He would take the time to make dinner, and then busy himself either with a crossword puzzle or a book until Tony came home. With the exception of one night where Tony didn’t have enough brain power to climb the stairs and they had planted on the couch to eat dinner and read _The Upside of Unrequited_ together, they always migrated upstairs when it was just the two of them.

The night before everything changed, Tony came home dragging his exhausted feet. It was mid-October, and as tired and cold as Tony was, he still felt a tingling thrill of excitement fluttering in his stomach when he stepped off the elevator on _their_ floor, unlocked the door to _their_ apartment, and shuffled in to the smell of dinner wafting through from the kitchen and Steve’s absent humming from the living room. 

Steve was sliding the bookmark into place and moving to get off the couch when Tony straddled his thighs and dropped into Steve’s lap. Steve’s arms came around him easily, and with a quiet laugh Steve nuzzled into Tony’s shoulder. “That bad?”

“CEO sucks. CEO doesn’t get to do the fun shit,” Tony mumbled petulantly into Steve’s shoulder. “I haven’t gotten down to the lab all week, it’s just meetings and paperwork and checking other people’s shit—and it’s good shit, but it’s not _my_ shit, but it is my shit—”

Steve’s quiet laugh grew into a deep-throated chuckle, and he turned his head to press a soft kiss to Tony’s ear. “Sweetheart, it’s only Tuesday.”

“Tuesday has no right being this fucking long,” Tony huffed, but his argument deflated after that. He nuzzled in closer, resting his cheek on Steve’s shoulder. 

Steve’s strong arms drew Tony closer to his chest, shielding him from everyone and everything clawing at him for attention or money. Sitting in Steve’s lap was the first moment of peace Tony had felt all day. In every other part of his life, Tony was the one who shouldered the responsibility of creating a better tomorrow. At every turn, he was the one people depended on - _he_ was the golden child, _he_ was the futurist people counted on to produce perfection. But with Steve it was so easy to just let go. 

Steve had no ulterior motive, no ego to feed. Steve wore his heart on his sleeve, and he was that reliable, self-less source of comfort and guidance Tony was only ever grateful to follow. 

“Sweetheart, you hungry?” Steve whispered, rubbing his big palm over Tony’s lower back. He wasn’t digging in with his fingers or his knuckles yet, but the firm pressure and warmth of Steve’s hand helped soothe some tension from Tony’s stubborn muscles. 

Tony grumbled softly to himself. He wanted to say no, that they’d had a catered meeting or that Pepper had forced him to scarf something down— _anything_ that would get him out of his suit and tie and into the hot tub as soon as humanly possible. But it would be a lie, and Tony would never tell Steve he was too full to eat his home cooked dinner unless it was absolutely necessary. 

“A little,” Tony admitted eventually. 

Maybe Steve could sense his reluctance, or he simply didn’t like the thought of Tony working on a hungry stomach, but Tony could feel Steve grow tense under him. Instead of voicing his thoughts, Steve only pressed a soft kiss to Tony’s temple and said, “We have yesterday’s shredded barbecue chicken. How about a quesadilla? You can eat it in the tub, or in bed.”

Tony took a moment to realize what Steve had said, then turned and stared at Steve in muted disbelief. 

“You know… when you say things like that, I sometimes worry that I’ll wake up and see it was all a dream. Like in _Repo Men_ , or _The Matrix_ , or _Lost_ , or—”

Steve snickered and rolled his eyes, thumping Tony on the back gently to interrupt his list before it went on too far. “That’s enough out of you,” he said with a smile, then with a playful squeeze of Tony’s hips, he said, “Go upstairs, get comfortable. I’ll be right behind you.”

With one more parting kiss, Tony got to his feet and did as he was told. He undressed, put his clothes away, and he was easing into the hot, bubbling water when Steve caught up to him. 

“My hero,” Tony purred in delight as Steve handed him his plate of food so he could undress for the tub, too. 

Tony could watch Steve undress twelve times an hour without growing tired of it, and now, after a particularly long, frustrating day, it was a dream come true. He waited for Steve to sit before wading across the small hot tub and sliding into Steve’s lap, reclaiming his earlier seat. 

Steve greeted him with a smirk and a kiss on the tip of his nose. 

“Tell me about your day? This is delicious, by the way,” Tony mumbled between bites of food. He probably should learn how to cook soon; Steve’s food wasn’t Michelin quality food, but it was a delicious part of coming home. Tony had only felt peckish when Steve asked him if he was hungry, but after tasting his first bite of hot, gooey cheese, grilled onions, and the flavorful barbecue chicken, Tony realized he was starving. He couldn’t eat fast enough. 

Steve laughed and told him to eat slower, that there was plenty more if he wanted thirds or fourths. Then he told Tony about his day, about Pamela, the Marine who Steve was helping regain dexterity and control of her right hand, and Trey, the music teacher who was recovering from recent back surgery. Steve worked with the same clients on a weekly basis, and he often learned about their lives and families in the process. Tony had never met these people, but through Steve, they felt like good friends. 

Tony rested his cheek against Steve’s shoulder and closed his eyes. He concentrated on the soothing sound of Steve’s voice, the gentle, absent touch of Steve’s hands, and the warm water all around them, and slowly, he started to let the day fade away. 

*** 

Wednesday morning, Steve’s alarm rang at 4:45 like it always did, and Tony whined into his pillow about it like he always did. Steve smiled fondly and rolled closer to Tony to press a soft kiss to his forehead. 

“You had a long day, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Stay in bed, I’ll come eat with you.” 

Tony clearly frowned by Steve’s unexpected suggestion, but Steve got out of there before Tony could ask him any more questions and wake up further. Steve was still waking up himself as he wandered down the stairs, got the coffee started, and with a big yawn he opened the door to grab the morning paper. 

Two slick, black shoes were on his doorstep, and as Steve slowly straightened, the shoes connected to the expensive suit, broad shoulders, and pencil thin mustache of Howard Stark. Steve stared at the man, half-convinced it was an early morning hallucination. The other half of his thoughts weren’t quite as convinced of anything, divided as he was between wondering if it was too late to cover his junk, and why a billionaire had taken his morning paper. 

“No solicitors wanted,” Steve mumbled around the tail-end of his yawn. “Try a library if you want the paper.”

“You know who I am, boy,” Howard snarled, eyeing Steve like he was something filthy stuck to the bottom of his shoe. “What are you, the flavor of the month? Go get Tony.”

“Yeah, I know who you are,” Steve admitted coolly. “You’re the man whose son calls him by his first name. You’re not wanted or welcome here.”

Steve slammed the door shut and slid the deadbolt home. From the other side of the door, Howard hammered on the door and demanded to be let in, and with every passing second he seemed to grow angrier and louder. 

The door was solid wood, but the way it rattled under the force of Howard’s rage left Steve wondering if maybe he could have handled that better. Howard looked livid, and this certainly wasn’t improving his temper. Soon he’d wake their neighbors, or even Tony might come down to see what the commotion was about, and then what would Steve say? 

He was speaking with the building security when Tony called his name. Steve spun on his heels to see Tony shuffling down the stairs, pale and wide-eyed. He had his phone in his hand. 

“It’s okay, Tony, security is on its way,” Steve rushed to assure him before Tony called the cops or something, but Tony was absolutely frozen. 

“Steve,” he whispered, his voice so soft it was almost lost to the sound of Howard pounding at the door. “Steve, it’s Sweden.”

Steve blinked at him. Was Tony having a stroke? Should he be calling an ambulance? Did people talk about Scandinavia when they had strokes? Quickly, Steve ended his own call and hurried up the stairs to help usher Tony back to bed. 

“Everything is okay, I promise. We can go back to bed,” he said as Tony’s phone buzzed back to life. Tony turned his unblinking stare from Steve’s face down to his own phone, and without a word, he held up the screen so Steve could see. The number was foreign, and putting the pieces together, Steve figured +46 referred to Sweden. 

So it wasn’t a stroke, but Tony still wasn’t answering his ringing phone. 

Steve gently cupped Tony’s face in his hands, trying to help him snap out of whatever funk he was in. “What’s going on? You’re scaring me, Tony.” 

“It’s Wednesday,” Tony whispered, “it’s _Sweden_. Steve, they call physics on Wednesdays.”

Steve wasn’t sure he heard right, or even understood what Tony was hinting at, but if he was right… if it really was the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences calling to speak with Tony, Howard’s inexplicable morning call made perfect sense. 

After all, if half of what Steve knew about Howard was true, the humiliation of Tony being conferred the most prestigious scientific prize - a prize Howard hadn’t achieved it in his whole lifetime - would be something to set him off. 

“Then what are you waiting for, sweetheart?” Steve asked, breathless in his excitement. He didn’t dare laugh, because what if he was wrong? Hell, what did it matter? “You won’t know until you answer it.”

Tony huffed and tried to roll his eyes, but none of that mattered. He glanced at Steve one last time, reached for his hand, and connected the call.


	25. Day 29-30: Sleepy sex, Swallow *

A Nobel laureate. 

He had gone to sleep on Tuesday night as an extension of Howard Stark’s legacy, and woken up on Wednesday to a life that would be entirely his own. Whatever fortune Howard amassed, whatever bombs he designed, the future would stand on Tony’s shoulders. 

After a lifetime of wondering how or if he’d ever break away out of Howard’s shadow, his conversation with Normark had been a wake-up call in more ways than one. 

Steve had stayed as long as he could, but once Howard was removed and Happy installed himself in the apartment lounge, he had left for work with the promise to return once he wrapped up his regular patients. They would count on him to be there. 

Tony, on the other hand, was too shaken to deal with people. He needed silence, and he needed time to think. So he hoisted his work for the day onto Pepper, rescheduled everything that he couldn’t give to her, then made himself comfortable on the couch with a couple of blankets, a bottle of wine, and a stack of research journals he’d been meaning to read. 

What Thoreau did in Walden Tony would do in his own home, and he had no intention of getting up until Steve came home. 

*** 

The next thing he knew, Tony’s world consisted of the spicy, comforting smell of Steve’s cologne, he was floating in a warm cocoon, and he felt happier than he had for as long as he could remember. 

“So strong,” Tony murmured with a soft slur, still foggy from his nap and warm from the wine. “I love you, did you know?”

Steve’s quiet chuckle was a gentle thrum against Tony’s blanket cocoon. “Really? I had no idea,” Steve teased, stealing a quick, chaste kiss from Tony’s smiling lips before he laid him out in their bed. Tony squirmed a little until he was comfortably on his side, and Steve helped him liberate himself from the blankets. 

“You know, there’s a good chance I love you, too. Once I find you,” Steve told him as they worked together to free Tony again. Tony’s smile only grew wider, and the moment he could, he reached for Steve by the collar of his t-shirt and pulled him down for a kiss. 

“I know you love me,” Tony informed him cheekily, and Steve laughed against Tony’s smirking lips, laughed into their kiss, and eventually he dropped his full weight on top of Tony in the middle of all the blankets. 

Steve was already working on undoing Tony’s shirt buttons when he pouted up at Tony with the worst hangdog expression. “Aw, shucks. What gave me away?”

“You feed me, you do the laundry,” Tony started listing while Steve peeled back the two sides of Tony’s shirt to expose his sleep-warm chest. With a quick flash of impish delight, Steve pressed an adoring kiss over Tony’s heart. 

“I’m your housewife,” Steve murmured, his wet lips brushing over Tony’s bare skin as he spoke, though comparing himself to a housewife didn’t seem to bother him much. 

“The way you told Howard to go to the library for the morning paper…” Tony added, and Steve suddenly burst out laughing. His laughter quickly turned to moans of frustration, and he rubbed his face against Tony’s chest in a misguided effort to hide. 

“Tony!”

“— _genius_ move, Steve, if I had been a little more aware at the time, I would have had my wicked way with you on the kitchen floor.”

Steve perked up, clearly over his embarrassment immediately. “It’s not too late for that.”

“You realize most people can’t stand up to him with, like, an entourage of lawyers, right?” Tony murmured with pride as he leisurely brushed his fingers through Steve’s soft, blond hair. “You amaze me, Steve. I don’t tell you often enough.”

The lustful glint in Steve’s eyes softened into an affectionate gaze, and he crawled a little closer to brush his lips over Tony’s in an adoring kiss. “You say plenty, sweetheart. Besides, today’s your day,“ Steve assured him in a playful whisper. “It’s my turn.”

Tony blinked after him while Steve slid down Tony’s body. “It’s your turn?” Tony echoed, his breath catching his throat as he watched Steve kiss his way down Tony’s abdomen, raising goosebumps with his teeth. 

Steve lifted Tony and slid the pajamas off his legs, and somehow made it look easy. The bastard even paused to smirk up at Tony as he swept his thumb over hollow of Tony’s ankle, rubbing the joint in his firm grip. Tony hissed in a sudden intake of breath and his hardening cock twitched with interest, and Steve dove to action immediately, happily alternating between licking a wet path and taking big, playful bites of Tony’s inner thighs as he laid down on his belly and nuzzled Tony’s groin. 

“ _Jesus_ —fuck! When is it ever not your turn, Steve—oh, _Steve!_ ” 

Without so much as a pause or foreplay, Steve sucked the head of Tony’s cock into his mouth, pushed forward, and didn’t stop until his nose pressed against Tony’s pelvis. Tony nearly choked on Steve’s name as he cried out in his surprise, his body arching off the mattress and clapping his thighs together around Steve’s head in an instinctive reflex. Rather than pry Tony’s legs apart from the grip he had around Steve’s head, Steve scraped his nails down the side of Tony’s thighs. The sensation sent shivers of pleasure down Tony’s spine, and he groaned his pleasure between attempts to catch his breath. 

Steve took long, measured breaths in the early stages of fighting off his gag reflex. Every time he swallowed, his throat constricted kneaded the length of Tony’s cock in quick pulses as his body tried to resisted the intrusion. Before Tony had the chance to adjust, Steve pulled back only to swallow him down to the root again, repeating it more eagerly and more quickly until he was bobbing on Tony’s cock, fucking his throat raw. 

Tony fingers curled into fists around Steve’s hair, pulling and pushing in turn, torn between wanting to make it last and make it good for Steve, too, and his rapidly mounting need to come. His resistance only lasted minutes, and all too soon, he was pushing Steve’s face down on his cock as his hips thrust up without abandon, pounding his cock into Steve’s hot, willing mouth until his hips snapped off the mattress with the force of his orgasm, filling Steve with his come. 

Panting for air and still fucking Steve’s mouth chasing those last, delirious seconds of euphoria, Tony could have sworn he saw stars. The strength in his grip bled away, releasing Steve’s hair and giving him the freedom to pull off his softening cock at any time, but Steve barely budged, dutifully swallowing down every last gush of come. Tony barely had the presence of mind to open his eyes and take in the erotic masterpiece that was Steve’s spit-slick, swollen lips after a blowjob. 

“You… such a dream,” Tony murmured, his tongue uncooperative and his head foggy in his afterglow. With every passing second, he could feel his limbs grow heavier, his body melting into the mattress. Boneless and incoherent, Tony floated between the planes of time and space, clumsily reaching for Steve in an effort to keep him close. 

Steve caught his flailing, outstretched hand, and brought it to his lips. “I’m right here, sweetheart,” he whispered against Tony’s fingers. 

Tony’s mouth curved up into a drowsy smile. Soon he couldn’t keep his eyes open, but in a last effort to communicate to Steve that he wanted him close, that Tony was happy that he was with him, Tony’s fingers twitched around Steve’s gentle grip in a sleepy facsimile of a squeeze. 

In the honeyed limbo between consciousness and sleep, Tony felt his weightless limbs drifting apart. He felt drunk on the memory of Steve all around him - the scent of Steve’s body filling his senses, the familiar touch of his lips teasing an old bruise on Tony’s neck. All Tony needed now was for those memories to to fill more than just his senses. What he wouldn’t give to feel Steve’s weight bearing down on him, anchoring him in this lonely, intangible world. The smell of his skin, the touch of his lips weren’t enough; Tony sobbed with the need to be filled, to be fucked, to be reminded of the man he belonged to in every other way. 

Tony’s breath hitched and his body shuddered with the first touch of Steve’s thick, long fingers. His slack body offered no resistance as one, then two fingers pressed into him. Every gentle stroke of his fingers sent warm, rolling waves of pleasure through Tony’s body, and lax as his body was, Tony’s ass twitched feebly around Steve’s fingers, trying to coax him deeper into his body. In his dreams, that stretch of Steve’s fingers grew even more impressive until it was nearly painful, but still Tony’s limp body took it and his heavy tongue begged for more, accommodating Steve like it was all he was ever meant to do. 

Tony didn’t care how long Steve fucked him so long as he never stopped. An eternity passed in heartbeats, and Tony basked in the bone-deep pleasure of Steve’s four slippery fingers pumping and twisting into his body, filling him for what felt both like months and seconds. 

Until he didn’t. 

All at once, Tony was bereft of Steve’s touch, his body gaping and incomplete with the aching loss. He felt himself skimming the surface of consciousness when he distantly recognized the blunt pressure taking the place of Steve’s fingers. 

Steve breached him slowly, and in his sleep-addled mind, Tony could have sworn it went on forever, filling Tony’s body until he scarcely had space left to breathe. He could feel his eyes rolling back into his head as consciousness faded into intangible pleasure and the mounting desire coiling deep within his body. A warm suction pulled on Tony’s nipple until it stung with pleasure, and with every leisurely, full-length thrusts, Steve further asserted his claim. If he had an ounce of strength left in his body, Tony would have latched on and urged Steve to put all his power into it, to core Tony’s body out in a way that no other man could satisfy. 

But caught as he was between the conscious and unconscious world, Tony could only lie limp and take it at Steve’s measured pace. Tony wept for begging, so desperate to free himself from the sweet, aching tension that teased and tempted him to near lunacy. 

“Mine,” Tony heard a deep voice rumble from all around him, and his eyelids fluttered open in an impossible act of obedience. Through the haze of spiraling desire Tony stared up at the god that was his Steve. 

“ _Mine,_ ” Steve growled through gritted teeth where he sucked a bruise into the tender skin of Tony’s throat, punctuating the claim over and over again with brutal snaps of his hips. Steve was losing his control, losing himself to his desire, and he bore into Tony with a hunger that quickly pushed Tony over the edge, breathless and out of his mind with the pleasure of his second orgasm. 

Distantly, he felt Steve’s frenzied thrusts until he buried himself deep in Tony’s body and came hard, filling Tony with his come. Steve was still fucking him and pumping his come deeper into Tony when his grasp of consciousness started to fade, and the last thing Tony felt before the world turned to blissful sleep was the touch of Steve’s lips brushing against his ear with a whispered promise of love.


	26. Day 31: Any combination of the above! *

How Steve had thought he could arrive at Sam and Sharon’s Halloween party dressed as a Highlander - but a sexy one who didn’t have fleas and lived in the time of central heating - and _not_ be mauled was beyond Tony. 

It was a big party in a big lodge upstate, full of people ranging from best friends and absolute strangers. Bucky and Steve had driven up early in the day to help Sam and Sharon set everything up, and by the time Tony arrived, Steve had a small crowd of followers offering to buy him a drink at a party with an open bar. Not that Tony could blame them. Steve’s proportions were unreal, and his broad chest and bared pecs practically begged to be touched. But as much as Tony typically loved seeing people gawking at his man, gawking at his nearly-nude man was another matter entirely. 

Tony lasted all of ten minutes before making his arrival known to Steve. 

“Steve! There you are,” Tony said past the crowd of people surrounding his partner. 

Steve turned after his voice like a flower searching for the sunshine, and rather than waiting for Tony to push his way past the six women watching Steve stack chairs, he politely excused himself to see Tony. 

“Tony, I was getting worried,” Steve said with a broad smile, greeting Tony with a sweet kiss. “Everything okay?”

Tony leaned in close, chasing Steve’s lips for another kiss. “Mbire needed a second opinion in his lab, we lost track of time. I tried calling,” he added, and sure enough, Steve blushed in response. 

“No pockets,” he explained, shaking his arms to show how his whole costume was no more than a long piece of fabric, a belt, and a pin. Tony eyed him impishly, taking it upon himself to confirm Steve was telling the truth. 

“You have no right looking this fucking good in a piece of wool,” Tony murmured as he smoothed his hands down Steve’s flanks and up his back. “Anyone pinched you yet? Tried to unfasten the pin? Asked you what’s worn under the kilt?”

“Sweetheart, you know better than anyone,” Steve answered with a smirk. “Nothing is worn under the kilt. Everything is in fine, working order.”

Something vital in Tony’s processor collapsed, and he gazed up at Steve in awed silence until his tongue came back online. Steve capitalized on the moment and cupped Tony’s face gently in his hands, leaned in closer, and kissed life back into Tony’s slack lips. 

“You can’t say that like that when we’re hours away from home,” Tony whimpered into his mouth. “I’m still wearing a jacket. Where’s yours?”

“Coat room, where yours should be,” Steve said, and with one last, quick peck on Tony’s lips, Steve leaned back to put some distance between them and gently gestured for Tony to give it to him. “I’ll put it away, you should get a drink.”

Tony had every intention of telling Steve that Steve’s jacket should join _them_ to the car and back to Manhattan, but for once, he kept his opinion to himself. He dug a little red fez out of his pocket, then handed his jacket over. “How will you find me with your horde of fans?”

Silence answered him, and it took Tony a beat to realize Steve was caught out staring. He almost looked like he was about to cry. 

“...Steve? What’s wrong?” Tony asked, looking down at himself to be sure he wasn’t bleeding through his vest or something. Workshop scrapes usually looked worse than they were, but Steve never liked the idea of Tony’s blood leaving his body. 

“I have to go,” Steve choked out, then quickly hugged Tony’s jacket to his chest. “Jacket. Drinks, go.”

Tony watched his flustered man scurry away with a proud smile. Distracted to the point of incoherence wasn’t quite what Tony had expected when Sarah let it slip that Steve’s first crush was Disney’s Aladdin, but he would take it. 

***

The night passed easily after that. Rhodey arrived as Captain Planet, complete with green wig and his skin painted blue, accompanied by Carol who was dressed as Gaia in leaves and a long, flowing green dress. The four of them carved out a little space for themselves near the bar until the Superbro Caucus rode into the party dressed as various Norse Gods. Most of them followed Thor around the party, but their eight-legged horse broke free to join the little group by the bar. The unfriendly side of Sleipnir turned out to be Natasha, and Bucky had been typecast as the ass. 

As the hosts, Thing 1 (Sharon) and Thing 2 (Sam) tended to float between friends and chat. Every time they popped back around, it was an automatic reset on the group conversation. 

“All the couples here match,” Sharon pointed out while eyeing Steve and Tony innocently. “So, what happened with you two? You used to be good with communication.”

“My mom betrayed me,” Steve answered at the same time as Tony said, “He has a crush on Sam Heughan.”

Steve rolled his eyes, and not for the first time that hour, he explained. “I don’t have a crush on Sam Heughan, I have a crush on Caitriona Balfe. _You_ have a crush on Sam Heughan.”

“Same difference,” Tony sniffed before taking a long sip of his drink to hide his horrendously pleased smirk. 

“Same old Steve and Tony,” Sam drawled with a knowing glance at Bucky. 

“Same old horndogs,” Bucky corrected without an ounce of shame. 

Rather than harboring any shame or irritation, Steve only seemed pleased with the diagnosis, and Tony couldn’t bring himself to disagree. 

“You’re all just jealous,” he declared to all of them with a self-satisfied smirk, and invited himself to obnoxiously squeeze and caress Steve’s bicep. “I get to do this, and you don’t.”

Steve sipped his drink without saying a word, but he draped his arm over the back of Tony’s chair just to close the distance between them. Tony didn’t stop pawing at his arm, and soon his chest, and across the table, Bucky scoffed. 

“Don’t objectify my best friend,” he complained indignantly on Steve’s behalf, to which Sam added, “At least not in front of us.”

“No, go ahead,” Sharon murmured. 

Sam stared at her, betrayed. “That’s our cue,” he decided, taking Thing 1 by the hand and turning away with an exaggerated huff. Tony and Steve were the first to start laughing, and the group conversation reset again. 

“Dinner will be starting soon,” Sharon told them once they inevitably had to move on to another group of friends. “Don’t miss it, okay?”

The table assured her and Sam they weren’t going anywhere until they were fed, but as soon as the hosts were out of earshot, the table turned as one to conspire.

“Something’s up,” Bucky was the first to point out. 

“She’s been drinking, so she isn’t pregnant,” Carol said, which Tony could back her up on - he’d been watching; pregnancy had been his guess, too. 

“Maybe they’re getting married?” Natasha thought out loud, though she was least familiar with them. 

“They’re not even engaged,” Rhodey said. “Maybe they’re announcing their engagement?”

Steve didn’t look that convinced. “Do people announce engagements anymore? I thought only old world people did that.”

“Sounds like I’ll need my phone either way, babe,” Tony decided, and he turned to nuzzle at Steve’s outstretched arm to get his attention. “Where’s the coat room?”

“I’ll show you,” Steve said instead, and together they excused themselves from the table. 

They didn’t even make it down the right hall. 

A little alcove in the hallway leading to the coat room had three doors on it, two for bathrooms, and the third had a sign that clearly stated, ‘Restricted Area - Staff Only.’ Tony couldn’t have cared less. With a firm grip of Steve’s belt, Tony towed him into the alcove and pushed Steve up against the door where he finally, after nearly long two hours of small talk, was free to kiss that knowing smirk off Steve’s sweet lips. 

“Tony—” Steve gasped between needful kisses, squeezing Tony closer against his body even as he tried to be responsible. “Dinner, Tony—”

Tony sucked Steve’s bottom lip into his mouth through his teeth, and as predictable as gravity, Steve’s moaned and surged against him. What minor resistance Steve tried to put up faded into history. With newfound vigor, he spun them around, pressing Tony up against door, and pinned him there with his weight without losing the connection of their lips. 

Kissing Steve was one of the best ways to spend his time, but in that moment, Tony wanted more. Steve, tall, blond, gorgeous Steve was ready to give Tony anything he wanted. Steve’s kisses were to die for, but watching friends and strangers alike ogling his man, from his thick biceps, to his broad shoulders and muscular back. When he didn’t move, Steve could have passed for an average man with impressive proportions, but the minute he picked up a bottle of wine to pour a glass, or helped reach for someone’s purse that was just out of reach, the gloriously sculpted cords of muscle came into hypnotizing relief. 

Tony had spent a lot of time staring, floundering, and _craving_. Now that he finally had Steve to himself and away from other watchful party goers with taste, he wanted more than some furtive make-out session in the shadows. Between quick, eager kisses and his greedy fingers, Tony got an elbow on the door handle, kicked in the door he was pressed up against, and as the door fell open behind him he hauled his Highlander into the closet by his kilt. 

Steve kicked the door shut behind them and practically tripped over his own feet in his rush to follow. They had stolen into a small janitorial closet, one with a small sink and counter space where all sorts of mops and cleaning supplies lived. There was barely enough space for them to stumble into, and even distracted by Aladdin’s trouble-making fingers and soft moans, mindful, protective Steve caught the small workstation Tony was rushing into. 

“Tony!” he hissed, getting a hand up at the last second to brace their impact before the ledge of the workstation dug into Tony’s back. 

“Not Tony,” Tony growled playfully, and try as he might to resist, Steve laughed against Tony’s smirking lips.

“Tony, we’re not supposed to—ah, fuck it,” Steve muttered and gave up pretending to care. They both knew by now how resistant Steve really was to breaking the rules, and Tony laughed into his mouth, grabbing Steve by his ears to reel him in for a kiss so eager and passionate that Steve’s smirk faded and only his want for Tony remained.

“Been wanting to tell you all night,” Tony whispered hoarsely between rushed kisses, rolling his hips up against Steve’s body. With only two layers of fabric between them, it was so easy to feel Steve’s interest pressing against his thigh. The thought of Steve’s cock free and so nearly exposed drove Tony half out of his mind. 

What was he trying to say again? Tony pulled away from Steve’s consuming kiss, panting softly against Steve’s jaw as he tried to get his thoughts straight. “Babe, I got you something…”

Steve chased Tony’s lips for more, so rather than waste time, Tony peeled one of Steve’s hands off his hips and guided it to his ass. 

Steve’s teeth flashed in a predatory grin. He squeezed a handful of Tony’s ass hard enough to sting, and in a low, husky voice, he growled, “How did you know? You’re what I’ve always wanted.”

With those words, he spun Tony to face the other way, and before Tony really knew what was happening, Steve had cleared off a corner of the workstation with a sweep of his arm. He lifted and bent Tony over the countertop, leaving Tony scrambling on the balls of his feet while Steve knelt behind him and pulled down Tony’s harem pants. 

Once Tony’s pants came off, Steve’s MO was always the same. He didn’t waste time, and he dove in with gusto. Usually, Tony would worry if Steve didn’t stroke, slap, squeeze, kiss, or bite his ass at first opportunity, but this time… he understood. 

“You thief,” Steve moaned, spreading Tony’s ass with both his hands to get a better view of the red gem Tony had smuggled from their treasure. Steve turned and wiggled the plug in Tony’s ass until Tony’s soft gasp told Steve he’d found his spot. Then, slowly and with care, Steve pulled the steel plug with the ruby gem out of Tony’s ass, pausing only at the widest point to give it a slow twist. 

Without thinking, Tony’s body clenched at the stretch. Tony distinctly felt the rim of his ass pulsing around the plug to bring it back into his body. It was a primal need to fill that unbearable emptiness inside him. After all that time spent watching people lusting over Steve all the while knowing that nobody knew of his little secret—a secret that might even drive Steve to fuck him publicly in front of friends and strangers if Tony told him about it—Tony was already so close to losing his mind. 

Steve closed his fist around Tony’s hard cock, stroking it absently in wonder. “God, Tony. You’re so close,” Steve whispered, his earlier inclination to stay in character forgotten. He gathered the copious precome slick over the head of Tony’s cock, then removed his hand to leave Tony’s cock untouched and throbbing with need. Tony watched Steve rub his fingers wet with his precome, and while it clearly wasn’t a replacement for lube, that first touch of Steve’s two fingers breaching him and smearing his own precome deep into his ass drove Tony out of his mind. 

“Condom?” Steve asked as he got to his feet behind Tony. Tony glanced over his shoulder at the question, but his gaze caught on the obscene tent in Steve’s kilt where his cock proudly jutted from his body, lifting the heavy folds of wool. 

“Fuck me, Steve,” Tony begged, bouncing impatiently on the balls of his feet. “No condom, fuck me, fuck me, _please._ ” 

The meat of Tony’s ass jiggled with his bouncing body, and like some twisted call and response, Steve brought his big, open palm down on his eager ass with a crack, leaving a stinging bruise in the shape of his hand. 

“You want me to fuck you, Tony? Fill you with my come and send you back to the party, filthy with it? Come spilling down your thighs? If only I could sit you on my cock all night, sweetheart,” he moaned directly into Tony’s ear, “fuck you full of my come in front of them all… keep it all plugged up inside you, make you mine…”

Tony couldn’t breathe. His eyes had rolled back and his back arched deeply to push his ass up for Steve, presenting it to him like a gift. Steve kept his ass spread and his hole exposed, but it felt like an eternity before Tony felt Steve lifting his kilt to free his cock. 

At first he only slid his cock through the cleft of Tony’s ass, and releasing his grip of Tony’s full cheeks, Steve thrust his cock between them, taking the edge off his own need. But Tony, who so desperately wanted to be filled, to be fucked and used and only come on Steve’s long, thick cock, sobbed with need. He was so close to getting what he wanted, and yet Steve denied him what mattered most.

Without warning, Steve took Tony’s thigh in hand and hefted it over the corner of the counter Tony was bent over, spreading him open to where his asshole was exposed from the stretch of the position alone. Tony struggled to even balance his weight on his toes, his sandal slipping on the cheap tiles so easily. Tony had no reliable way to hold himself up and no leverage to move. He was entirely at Steve’s mercy. 

Steve stuffed three fingers into Tony’s mouth to silence and distract him, gripped Tony’s hip with his free hand, and with no other warning, he thrust his cock into Tony’s ass. 

Tony bit down on Steve’s fingers and nearly screamed at the first full taste of Steve’s cock. The plug had kept him somewhat wet and stretched for Steve’s use, but it wasn’t the same as being fingered open and well prepared with lube. This time, Tony had gone with the bare minimum, or less than that. Every time Steve fucked into him, the friction was more pain than pleasure, and every thrust more aggressive than the last. 

“Gonna make you feel it,” Steve promised into Tony’s ear as he fucked him with quick, powerful thrusts. Every snap of Steve’s hips had Tony’s ass bouncing from the force of it, and as Steve really started pounding into him, Tony’s ass cheeks clapped together loudly with every thrust.

“Mine, Tony, you’re _mine_ , gonna leave you gaping, leaking my come, and aching so good, sweetheart, aching for me to fill you. Think they’ll notice?” Steve whispered then with a covetous drawl. “The way you walk… how you sit? Everyone will see then, Tony, everyone will know—” 

With a wet, gurgling cry, Tony’s body seized with the sudden force of his orgasm. His hips stuttered against the counter helplessly as his trapped cock painted his bare chest with his own come. Steve’s filthy tongue silenced with a heavy groan of pleasure, and he bore down on Tony, fucking Tony through his orgasm for the pleasure of thrusting against the tight clutch of his convulsing muscles, until he buried himself deep in Tony’s ass and came hard. He continued fucking Tony’s ass through his own orgasm, until he was powerless to do anything but let Tony’s recovering body milk his softening cock. 

In stark contrast to how he’d fucked Tony only seconds earlier, Steve pulled out slowly and with great care. He knelt behind Tony again, spreading his cheeks just enough to see his own handywork. His gentle probing and clinical touch told Tony it wasn’t a part of the sex, but Steve’s need to assure himself that Tony wasn’t hurt or bleeding. It was something Steve always did after a particularly rough scene, and while he hadn’t said it, Tony cherished these wordless, physical check-ins deeply. He stayed in position, relaxed and satisfied while Steve examined his ass with gentle fingers and indulging massages. 

“We’re going home,” Steve said, his expression pinched with concern. “I think you’re bleeding a little.” 

Tony moaned softly in reply, and he watched Steve run a kitchen towel under the faucet to clean Tony up. The water was lukewarm and comforting, and Tony sighed his contentment. It would only be better if Steve would go back to his gentle probing. 

“If it’s so little you’re not sure,” Tony murmured, drowsy in his afterglow, “it’s not serious, Steve… feel fine, I promise, babe…”

He could hear the water still running, and by the time he opened his eyes, Steve had washed off the plug and was drying it off. 

For a second, Steve’s gaze drifted to Tony’s ass where he was still trussed up on the counter, thighs on lewd display and Tony’s heart rate picked up with the exciting thought of Steve plugging him back up so Tony would spend the rest of the evening full of Steve’s come. 

“Do it,” Tony whispered, lifting his ass as best as he could on his tiptoes. “I want it, baby, please.”

Steve smirked at Tony’s shameless begging, but he dried the plug off and set it aside. “Later,” he promised, then finally coming around to lift Tony off the counter and help him find his balance again. He wiped Tony’s torso clean with another warm paper towel, and finally his cock before helping Tony into his pants again. 

Tony stood still while Steve took care of him, only righting his vest and his fez. “Later when?”

“For the drive home,” Steve simply said, and with a quick tuck and fold of his tartan around his belt, he created a pocket in his kilt for the plug. 

“It’s a long drive to Manhattan, Steve,” Tony whined, but Steve only laughed and kissed Tony’s pouting lips.

“But it’s not a long drive to the tree house.” 

The happy surprise of Steve’s words warmed Tony from head to toe with excitement. If he kissed Steve again, they’d never rejoin the party, and while that didn’t sound so bad, they had promised to stay for dinner. 

Steve leaned in with a quick, chaste kiss, a last touch while they were still in private, before he opened the door and stepped out ahead of Tony. The coast was clear, not a soul in sight. 

“No pockets, huh?” Tony teased as they finally emerged to rejoin the party. They were just making their way back as they realized Sam and Sharon were standing at a podium in front of the whole crowd. 

Chills ran down Tony’s spine as he realized what had happened. Those two weren’t dressed as Thing 1 and Thing 2 anymore - Sam was in a striking tuxedo, and Sharon was breathtaking in a white, silk gown. They were in the middle of saying their vows. 

Steve and Tony got disapproving stares and tutting as they made their way back to their table. Every one of their friends turned to give them knowing looks, but they said nothing. Steve quietly shifted his chair closer to Tony’s so he could keep his arms around him and rest his chin on Tony’s shoulder. He wasn’t so good about leaving distance between them after sex, especially when it was rough, but Tony only ever indulged in Steve’s after care. 

Tony pressed a soft kiss to Steve’s cheek and rested his hand on Steve’s knee, giving him a gentle, affectionate squeeze. 

“Really should have gotten my phone,” Tony murmured as they watched Sharon slide the ring on Sam’s finger. He felt Steve’s smile stretched into a big grin.

“Ambush weddings probably include photographers,” Steve replied in a whisper. Then, a little more quietly, he said, “Hey, Tony? You ever think of this?”

Tony blinked up at where Sam and Sharon were promising to be together until death do them part in front of all their friends and family. 

“Not really,” Tony admitted quietly, then turned enough to catch Steve’s eye. “You’re all I need. I don’t need you to make promises to anyone else, just to me.”

Steve smiled, and stole a tender, lingering kiss while Tony was still turned his way. “You have my word. You’ve had it since college, sweetheart, I’m not going anywhere.”


End file.
